Calisphere uses many technologies to aggregate and deliver digital collections.
The public interface uses Django templates to build pages, Sass to build CSS, Backbone.js to maintain and manage query state, and Jquery-pjax to manage URL history as parts of pages are updated.
Item-level metadata on Calisphere is harvested from a variety of platforms. The data is indexed in OpenSearch. Collection- and institution-level data is maintained in a Django-based Collection Registry. Some of the items that appear on Calisphere are hosted in a customized implementation of the digital asset management system Nuxeo.
All of our code is publicly available on GitHub.
Rikolti
In 2021, we started an active development project called Rikolti, to replace our current Calisphere harvesting infrastructure. Our Calisphere harvester is crucial to our technical pathways to aggregate collections from your local digital asset management systems, and enables us to pull a thumbnail version of your resources as well as a copy of the descriptive metadata.
In June 2024, we completely replaced our current harvesting infrastructure with Rikolti, which supercedes our prior harvester. Rikolti implements a more streamlined and efficient framework, using current and supported technologies. For details, please visit our project GitHub page which includes our technology framework as well as our requirements: https://github.com/ucldc/rikolti/wiki
We are committed to developing infrastructure that uses current, well-supported systems that can continuously support the statewide aggregation of digital cultural heritage resources.
Our previous Calisphere harvester used older technologies adapted from the Digital Public Library of America's (DPLA) version 1 harvesting stack, developed in 2013.