The Rutgers Workflow Management System: Migrating a Digital Object Management Utility to Open Source

Abstract

This article examines the development, architecture, and future plans for the Workflow Management System, software developed by Rutgers University Libraries (RUL) to create and catalog digital objects for repository ingest and access. The Workflow Management System (WMS) was created as a front-end utility for the Fedora open source repository platform and a vehicle for a flexible, extensible metadata architecture, to serve the information needs of a large university and its collaborators. The next phase of development for the WMS shifted to a re-engineering of the WMS as an open source application. This paper discusses the design and architecture of the WMS, its re-engineering for open source release, remaining issues to be addressed before application release, and future development plans for the WMS.