Community

Improving Kitodo together

Digitisation is a dynamic business sector with growing requirements. Individual institutions generally do not have the resources to see through these developments on their own, making the cooperative development of shared, open source tools an effective and affordable solution.

Our objective in evolving Kitodo is to ensure a stable developer and user community for digital libraries and archives. The Kitodo community therefore adopts a strict open source strategy:

• Kitodo is open source software, i.e. anyone can view the source code and modify it to meet their (or others’) needs.
• Each Kitodo user possesses different resources, experience, and skills, all of which benefit the overall project.
• Developments are rarely so specific that they cannot be used by other users. By releasing such developments, the entire community benefits from every investment made in Kitodo.
• If personal development capacities and financial resources are not sufficient to implement a requirement, development requests can be realised collaboratively – whether through cooperative in-house development or joint commissioning of a service provider.

Where and how can I receive support?

The Kitodo community is united in its conviction that, in view of the formidable challenges posed by the digitisation of institutions devoted to preserving historical memory, it is more important to invest in the gradual growth of internal technical and organisational expertise than it is to outsource skill sets and expend substantial funds on software licensing and support costs. A key role here is played by the practice of sharing and coordinated mutual support within the community.

To ensure it can best advise and assist users on technical and organisational issues, the Kitodo community has established support structures for the following typical scenarios.

1. Users who have clearly defined questions relating to the use and development of Kitodo or Kitodo modules are well-served by the Kitodo mailing list. They will typically receive helpful answers from the community or the Kitodo release manager within a short period of time. If this should be unsuccessful for any reason, the Kitodo association office will address your matter to an experienced member institution.
   You do not need to be a member of the association to use the mailing list. The list archive provides an impression of the topics and conversations.
2. For users who occasionally need more extensive advice and possibly also on-site practical assistance for Kitodo installation, workflow modelling, etc., the Kitodo office maintains a list of voluntary mentors. Requests can be directed to these proven experts from various libraries by the association office. More information is available from the association office (contact[at]kitodo.org).
3. For institutions that would like an initial and extensive introduction to Kitodo in the form of a product presentation or ongoing support, in particular on-site, we are happy to provide a list of companies that to the best of our knowledge have already worked in these fields. To obtain the company list, please also use the association office address (contact[at]kitodo.org). Please bear in mind that the association cannot provide further assistance in selecting service providers.

Kitodo in use

On GitHub, we document case studies relating to the wide-ranging use of the Kitodo.Production and Kitodo.Presentation modules in libraries, archives, and at digitisation service providers.