Blacklight is an open-source Ruby on Rails engine for creating search interfaces on top of Apache Solr indices. The software is used by libraries to create discovery layers or institutional repositories; by museums and archives to highlight digital collections; and by other information retrieval projects.
| Initial release | October 30, 2009 |
|---|---|
| Stable release | 8.4.0[1]
/ 18 September 2024 |
| Repository | |
| Written in | Ruby |
| Type | Library and information science software |
| License | Apache License |
| Website | projectblacklight |
History
editThe University of Virginia began developing Blacklight based on its Collex scholarly publishing software, which also used Ruby and Rails and Solr.[2] The goals of the project included improving the user experience over contemporary OPAC systems, particularly with regard to relevance ranking, and showcasing historically underutilized library collections.[3]
Features
editBlacklight includes support faceted browsing, relevance-based searching, bookmarking documents, permanent URLs for documents.[4] It is relatively simple to customize Blacklight, typically by writing Ruby code that overrides default Blacklight code.[5] There are several plugins available for Blacklight as well, including an extension for geospatial data,[6] a digital exhibit creation tool,[7] and various search and user interface features.
Implementations
edit- Early adopters of Blacklight include libraries at University of Virginia, Stanford University, North Carolina State University, WGBH Open Vault, and University of Wisconsin–Madison.[8]
- The National Radio Astronomy Observatory uses Blacklight to provide access to data about telescopes, papers, conference proceedings, and theses.[9]
- The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists used Blacklight with Apache Tika to comb through the 11.5 million documents from Mossack Fonseca popularly known as the Panama Papers.[10]
See also
editReferences
edit- ^ "Release 8.4.0". 18 September 2024. Retrieved 20 September 2024.
- ^ Cohen, Laura B. (2007). "Adapting an Open-Source Scholarly Web 2.0 System for Findability in Library Collections or: Frankly, Vendors, We Don't Give a Damn". Library 2.0 initiatives in academic libraries. Chicago: Association of College and Research Libraries. pp. 58–72. ISBN 9780838984529.
- ^ Eden, Brad; Sadler, Bess (6 March 2009). "Project Blacklight: a next generation library catalog at a first generation university". Library Hi Tech. 27 (1): 57–67. doi:10.1108/07378830910942919.
- ^ Kang, Hyeran (23 September 2011). "A new interface for IUCAT: Blacklight". reDUX: a blog by the Discovery & User Experience dept. Retrieved 19 July 2016.
- ^ "Configuring and Customizing Blacklight". GitHub. Retrieved 19 July 2016.
- ^ "GeoBlacklight". Retrieved 19 July 2016.
- ^ "Spotlight". Project Blacklight. Retrieved 19 July 2016.
- ^ Cartolano, Robert T. (4 November 2015). "History of Blacklight". doi:10.7916/D8J38S9M.
{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires|journal=(help) - ^ DuPlain, Ron; Balser, Dana S.; Radziwill, Nicole M. (19 July 2010). Build great web search applications quickly with Solr and Blacklight. Software and Cyberinfrastructure for Astronomy. doi:10.1117/12.857899.
- ^ Hackett, Robert (11 April 2016). "The Panama Papers Search Tool Began as an Academic Skunkworks Project". Fortune. Retrieved 19 July 2016.