Aurora FAQs

Aurora is a fully managed platform for digital collections and institutional repositories. It helps libraries, archives, museums, and universities manage, organize, and provide access to digital collections without managing repository infrastructure themselves.

Aurora is built on the open source framework Islandora and includes hosting, maintenance, feature upgrades, security updates, and support as part of the service. It’s completely turnkey and requires no technical expertise.

Aurora is designed for organizations that manage and provide access to digital collections, digital archives, institutional repositories, and cultural heritage materials.
Aurora is commonly used by:

It is particularly well suited for organizations seeking a modern, cloud-hosted digital collections platform without the need to manage servers, software updates, security, backups, or repository infrastructure internally.

Institutions choose Aurora to simplify the management of digital collections while reducing the time, cost, and technical expertise required to maintain repository infrastructure.

Instead of managing servers, software updates, security, backups, and platform maintenance, internal teams can focus on collections, metadata, user services, research support, and institutional priorities while Discovery Garden manages the platform.

Common reasons institutions choose Aurora include:

Aurora is a fully managed, cloud-hosted repository platform built on Islandora. It provides a standardized feature set, predictable implementation process, ongoing maintenance, security updates, hosting, and support.

As part of the Aurora platform, new native Aurora features and enhancements are made available to all Aurora clients as part of their subscription, eliminating the need to fund or maintain those features independently.

A custom Islandora implementation is tailored to an institution’s specific requirements and may include custom workflows, integrations, metadata models, user interfaces, or specialized functionality. Institutions that require custom development are typically responsible for funding, maintaining, and upgrading those customizations over time.

Aurora is generally the best fit for organizations seeking a proven, lower-maintenance digital collections platform with predictable costs and faster implementation timelines. Custom Islandora services are best suited for institutions with highly specialized requirements that extend beyond a standard repository implementation.

Aurora migration projects can include:

Discovery Garden works with each institution to develop a migration approach that aligns with its collections, metadata standards, and project goals.

Aurora supports a wide range of digital collections, digital archives, and institutional repository content, including:

Aurora is designed to support both born-digital and digitized materials and can accommodate diverse metadata standards, collection structures, and access requirements within a single platform.

Yes.

Aurora is designed for librarians, archivists, collection managers, and repository administrators.

Common collection management tasks can be performed through the interface without requiring technical expertise or developer support.

Aurora also includes powerful collection management tools that allow non-technical users to perform tasks such as metadata cleanup, bulk updates, mapping fields, importing and exporting records, and managing collection data through an intuitive interface.

This enables librarians and archivists to make bulk changes to collections more efficiently while reducing reliance on developers or IT staff for routine collection management activities.

Yes.

Aurora provides flexible metadata management tools that support a wide range of digital collections, institutional repositories, archives, and cultural heritage materials.

Aurora supports:

Metadata can be created, edited, and managed individually or through batch processes depending on collection requirements. This flexibility allows institutions to support established metadata standards while adapting to the unique needs of their collections and users.

Yes.

Aurora supports batch ingest workflows and bulk metadata management to help institutions efficiently manage large collections and ongoing content additions.

Using Discovery Garden’s tools, institutions can:

These tools help reduce manual effort, improve metadata quality, and streamline the management of large and growing digital collections.

Yes.

Aurora conforms to WCAG 2.2 AA standards and is supported by a current Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT).

The platform is regularly reviewed and enhanced to improve accessibility for users accessing digital collections across a variety of devices and assistive technologies.

Accessibility features include:

Aurora also supports institutions’ efforts to meet accessibility and ADA compliance requirements through accessible platform design and support for accessible content workflows.

Many institutions choose Aurora as part of broader accessibility and digital modernization initiatives aimed at improving access to digital collections for all users.

Aurora is hosted in the cloud on secure, enterprise-grade infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS).

All Aurora environments are deployed across two redundant availability zones to provide high availability and resiliency. This architecture helps ensure continued access to collections in the event of an infrastructure or data center failure within a single availability zone.

As a fully managed service, Discovery Garden is responsible for:

This allows institutions to focus on managing digital collections and serving users rather than maintaining repository infrastructure and technology systems.

Yes.
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Aurora supports APIs and interoperability standards that allow repository content to integrate with discovery systems, research platforms, preservation systems, and other institutional applications.
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Aurora supports:

These capabilities enable institutions to exchange metadata, integrate with campus systems, support discovery services, and build custom workflows while maintaining flexibility as requirements evolve.

Because Aurora is built on Islandora and Drupal, institutions also benefit from a mature ecosystem of integrations and extensibility options.

Yes.
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Aurora is designed to support organizations of varying sizes, from small specialized repositories to large, multi-collection environments containing millions of digital objects.
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The platform can accommodate growth in:

Because Aurora is delivered as a cloud-hosted service, infrastructure can scale as collections and usage grow, allowing institutions to expand their digital collections without needing to redesign or replace their repository platform.

Aurora includes ongoing support from Discovery Garden’s team of repository specialists, librarians, and digital collections professionals.
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Support services include:

Aurora clients have access to a team with extensive experience supporting academic libraries, archives, museums, public libraries, and cultural heritage organizations. This allows institutions to receive both technical assistance and guidance on repository management best practices.

Discovery Garden has spent more than 15 years helping libraries, archives, museums, and universities manage, preserve, and provide access to digital collections, digital archives, and institutional repositories.
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Our team combines expertise in:

Collectively, our team brings more than 100 years of experience working with digital collections and repository platforms.
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Unlike many technology vendors, Discovery Garden focuses exclusively on the libraries, archives, museums, and cultural heritage sector. This specialization allows us to understand the operational, technical, and strategic challenges faced by repository teams and to deliver solutions designed specifically for their needs.
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We offer both fully managed repository solutions through Aurora and custom repository development, migration, and consulting services through our professional services team.

Implementation timelines vary based on collection size, migration requirements, and integrations. Most Aurora implementations can be completed within 8 - 12 weeks.
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Projects typically include discovery, repository configuration, metadata review, migration planning, metadata mapping, metadata clean-up, content migration, testing, training, and launch support. More complex projects involving large-scale migrations or custom integrations may require additional time.

Aurora is offered as a fully managed annual subscription service that includes hosting, maintenance, support, security updates, backups, and ongoing platform enhancements. The pricing page on our site has the most up-to-date details on pricing.

Yes.
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Aurora supports the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF), enabling institutions to deliver high-resolution images through standards-based viewers and services.
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IIIF support allows users to zoom, compare, and share digital objects while improving interoperability with other repositories, digital collections platforms, and research tools.

Yes.
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Aurora is designed to support multiple collections within a single repository environment, making it well suited for libraries, archives, museums, and institutions managing diverse digital collections.

Collections can have their own metadata requirements, object types, and organizational structures while remaining searchable and discoverable through a unified platform.
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Aurora also supports collaborative and consortial environments where multiple departments, repositories, or participating institutions contribute content to a shared repository.

Yes.
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Aurora supports a variety of consortial and multi-institution models.
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Some consortia choose to deploy a separate Aurora repository for each participating institution while benefiting from discounted consortium pricing, shared expertise, and a common platform.
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Aurora can also support multi-institution repositories where multiple organizations contribute content to a single repository. In these environments, content can be organized using collection and sub-collection structures to distinguish materials from different institutions while providing users with a unified discovery experience.
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Discovery Garden works with each consortium to determine the deployment model that best aligns with governance, administration, branding, and collection management requirements.

Yes.
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Aurora supports institutional authentication and single sign-on (SSO) through commonly used standards and identity providers.
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Supported authentication methods can include:

These integrations allow institutions to authenticate users through existing campus identity management systems and security policies.

Aurora provides a flexible metadata framework designed to support a wide range of digital collections, archives, and repository use cases.
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Out of the box, Aurora includes more than 55 standard metadata fields and supports:

During implementation, institutions may configure up to five custom metadata fields as part of their onboarding project. Additional custom fields can be added after launch through Discovery Garden’s support and professional services team.
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Aurora is designed to balance flexibility with platform consistency, allowing institutions to meet collection-specific requirements while benefiting from a standardized, fully managed repository platform.

Aurora is a fully managed digital collections platform designed specifically for libraries, archives, museums, and cultural heritage organizations.
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Compared to many digital collection and repository solutions, Aurora combines cloud hosting, platform maintenance, security updates, support, and ongoing enhancements into a single subscription. This reduces the operational burden on internal teams and allows institutions to focus on managing collections rather than maintaining repository infrastructure.
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Key capabilities include:

Because Aurora is built on Islandora and Drupal, institutions benefit from open standards, a mature technology ecosystem, and the flexibility to evolve as collection and organizational requirements change.
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Aurora is often selected by institutions seeking a modern alternative to legacy repository platforms or a lower-maintenance option than managing repository infrastructure internally.

Yes.
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New native Aurora features and platform enhancements are included as part of an active Aurora service.
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As Discovery Garden continues to invest in the platform, Aurora clients benefit from ongoing improvements without needing to purchase separate upgrades or fund platform enhancements independently.
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This shared innovation model helps institutions gain access to new capabilities while maintaining predictable costs and reducing the long-term burden of software ownership.