Page 124 - Building Digital Libraries

General-Purpose Technologies Useful for Digital Repositories

tools were rarely shared and maintained outside of the organization. This has
been one of the transformational changes that have occurred in the library
and larger cultural heritage community: the coordinated development of
digital library software and platforms. But this change has brought with it a
new set of questions that digital library managers need to consider. When
working with or contributing to an open source or coordinated application
development effort, there needs to be a reliable way of sharing and managing
code contributions. While the cultural heritage community has definitely
gravitated to a specific code management environment, a number of options
are available:

GitHub (http://github.com): GitHub is a popular distributed code
management system that is used by a large number of library
and cultural heritage development projects. In fact, it is prob-
ably the most popular of the available code management op-
tions. Whether one’s library or organization decides that it
will use a public or private instance of GitHub to manage its
application development, proficiency with GitHub will be
re quired to participate in nearly any outside software de velop-
ment effort.
Subversion (https://subversion.apache.org/): Subversion is a cen-
trally managed document/code management system. Prior to
GitHub, Subversion was popular as an organizational code
management solution, since it enabled organizations to cen-
trally manage all changes. It’s still used at many organi za tions
for local code/document management.

Today, the use of a code management system should be a requirement for any
organization with individuals developing code. These systems enable orga-
nizations to preserve historical memory, protect against code breakage, and
share projects either outside or inside the organization. These systems are,
essentially, how software code is preserved because these tools manage ver-
sion control, contribution records, and provide snapshots of major releases.
These tools protect an organization, as people move on and change jobs.

Future of Software Development

The future of software development is always difficult to predict because
the changes happen so rapidly. Few saw the ubiquity of mobile application
development until Apple shifted the paradigm with the iPhone. Software
development within the cultural heritage space is equally difficult to predict
because so much of this community is reliant on open source development
and grant funding. With that said, a couple of trends are worth noting.

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