Future Enhancement

This page documents the planned, upcoming versions for the SobekCM software.

For the most recent updates to SobekCM, see the Sobek Digital site and SobekRepository.org.

Support and development of this digital library is an ongoing process. If history is any indicator, there will be many upgrades and optimizations applied over the next twelve months. In particular, the following major upgrades are planned...

Version 4.12

Version 4.12 will include the following and is expected by early March 2018.

Search result changes
- Changes to the results viewer architecture to allow more plug-ins for result viewers
- Searches will be able to be pulled "just-in-time" by the results viewers themselves if desired
- Customizable layouts, defined in the XML config files and a HTML snippet file.
- Add back the export results viewer which will export many of the metadata fields for all items in a search or browse.
- Ability to customize who gets access to which results viewers ( by user and user group )
- Add into UI ability to set the fields for each results view (already in database)
Item Management Updates
- Combine the file and image upload screens to be one screen for managing images and files
- Changes to the Edit Behaviors screen (and template system to support custom template pages)
  1. Add ability to upload thumbnail from this screen
  2. Better management (including ordering) for Viewers
  3. More graphical selection of wordmarks for left of item viewer
  4. Selection of hierachical aggregations and select/search by collection name, not just code
- Add ability to upload thumbnail when submitting materials (same template changes)

Version 4.13

Version 4.13 will add the ability to manage the collection home pages and home views with more extensibility and allows plug-ins to add new custom views. This version will convert the home pages to customizable layouts, defined in the XML config files, that consist of different 'widgets' to display. This should allow full customization of home pages.

The following system-wide settings updates may also be included:

Add ability to upload some standard images
1. favicon.ico
2. default button
3. default banner
Make the builder modules (at the folder) level exposed, at least for display
Allow the default order of view types to be edited
Display the results viewer

Version 4.13 will be released in late May 2018.

Version 5.0

Version 5.0 will include the following changes and is expected by July 2018.

In particular, the following changes are planned:

Item Management
1. Ability to customize the item group views(?)
2. Allow all the serial hierarchy for a single title to be changed simultaneously (like SMaRT) (?)
Add bulk spreadsheet and MARC importer to the web interface (although it is likely to be added earlier)
Convert the SobekCM Builder to run as a Windows service, rather than a scheduled task.
Allow admin and mySobek menus to be configured and support plug-ins.

With version 5.0, the old legacy searching system will be deprecated.

We will also be doing some database cleanup here to remove old stored procedures, tables, and unused columns.

LastItemAdded, Current_Item_Count, Current_Title_Count in SobekCM_Item_Aggregation table unused?

Additional Planned Changes

Finish adding EAD support by including dynamic container list and digital objects tab
Add metadata edit lat/long with Google maps
New item views
- Slideshow view, like page turner, for a number of different formats
- Text & image split view, to allow review/editing of OCR'd text online
SobekCM Image Server
- Allows features to be drawn on the image, such as rectangles, squares, circles, markers, etc..
- Initially employed for the Aerials viewer to show the geographic region that matches a user search
- Will eventually include ability to read an ALTO file and highlight the corresponding text regions
Review and finish translations for all terms in SobekCM
Currently users can add books to your bookshelf, but cannot bookmark individual pages