Islandora and Drupal: Open Source Foundations for Digital Repositories

Islandora and Drupal: Open Source Foundations for Digital Repositories

At Discovery Garden, we work with libraries, archives, and museums across the world to deliver digital repository solutions that are built to last. Whether you’re using Aurora, our hosted, ready-to-go Islandora platform, or DG Starter, our flexible development stack, Islandora brings the power and flexibility of Drupal to institutions of all sizes.

Drupal provides the foundation for Islandora’s flexibility and extensibility, but it’s the combination of community contributions, vendor innovation, and modular architecture that truly powers the platform’s adaptability. If you’ve ever wondered why Islandora is so capable of handling complex metadata, varied digital formats, and evolving institutional needs, the answer lies in its roots. Islandora heavily leverages Drupal, which currently has a worldwide install base of over half a million.

Did You Know?

Drupal powers over 500,000 websites worldwide, including the European Commission, the Government of Canada, NASA, and major universities. Islandora brings this proven platform to libraries and archives.

Here’s how that matters for you.

Drupal makes content modeling easy

Drupal’s content model - built on nodes, entities, and fields - is incredibly flexible. Islandora uses these same building blocks to represent all kinds of digital objects, from books and images to datasets and compound collections. You can define exactly what metadata you need and how it’s structured, all through Drupal’s admin interface.

In Islandora, administrators can customize metadata profiles using Drupal’s Field UI. There’s no need to write code or hire a developer to adapt your repository to local needs.

You control how content is displayed

Drupal’s Views module makes it easy to build custom search results, browse pages, exhibits, and landing pages. With Islandora, this power is in your hands. In Aurora, we provide a set of curated displays out of the box. With DG Starter, your team can collaborate with Discovery Garden to shape every view of your collection.

Taxonomies support clean metadata and controlled vocabularies

Drupal has a built-in taxonomy system that’s used in Islandora to manage things like subject headings, creators, and formats. These vocabularies can be open or controlled, linked to external authority terms, and used consistently across your repository.

Roles and permissions are built-in and battle-tested

User access in Islandora is governed by Drupal’s role-based permissions system. You decide who can view, edit, publish, or delete content. Drupal's Content Moderation module also provides workflow states such as draft, review, and published for editorial processes. Islandora builds on this foundation and provides tools to support common library and archive publishing workflows, such as embargoed theses, patron-only collections, and staged content review.

Smart file and media handling

Files in Islandora, whether PDFs, images, audio, or video, are handled by Drupal’s Media module. Drupal can handle both access and preservation which are processed with Islandora micro-services that create access copies, thumbnails, generate OCR, and extract metadata.

In Aurora, these services are pre-configured and automatically run in the background. With DG Starter, they can be customized or extended to meet specific requirements.

Interoperable by design

Drupal provides powerful REST and JSON:API endpoints for programmatic access to content and metadata. Islandora extends this foundation with repository-specific standards such IIIF for image delivery, OAI-PMH for metadata harvesting by aggregators like DPLA, and JSON-LD for publishing Linked Data to the semantic web. Both Aurora and DGI Starter include these capabilities, making it straightforward to integrate your repository with discovery services, research tools, digital exhibits, and preservation systems.

Separation of preservation and presentation

In modern Islandora hosted with Discovery Garden, your digital assets are stored in S3 object storage, providing durability, versioning, and scalability. Drupal contains the single source of truth for metadata in its own database and also serves as the experience layer where users interact with content and staff manage metadata and workflows. 

Fedora is now optional in the current versions of Islandora. When used, Fedora serves as an OCFL-compliant repository for both files and metadata, offering an additional layer of standards-based preservation. Whether you choose to include Fedora or not, this architecture delivers a flexible, unified system that combines robust preservation options with a customizable and user-friendly experience. 

Extendable to meet your needs

Islandora integrates with Drupal's 50,000+ contributed modules while providing its own suite of repository-specific extensions for OAI-PMH, advanced search, preservation workflows, and more. Aurora includes a curated selection of modules to support common repository use cases. DG Starter is open for anything you’d like to add.

Professional-grade configuration management

For institutions managing complex environments, Drupal’s configuration management tools allow version-controlled, repeatable deployments. At Discovery Garden, we support this with DG Starter (our Docker stack for Islandora) and other tools to streamline development, testing, and launch.

Backed by a vibrant open-source community

Drupal is one of the world’s largest and most active open-source communities and was named a Digital Public Good in 2023. The Islandora community builds on that with a global network of developers, librarians, archivists, and vendors working together to improve the platform. Our clients benefit from both ecosystems.

What Islandora adds on top of Drupal

Islandora adds a suite of modules and micro-services to turn Drupal into a full-featured digital repository. This includes tools like Islandora Workbench for batch ingestion, Crayfish services for derivative generation, and out-of-the-box integration with SOLR, triplestores, and linked data tools.

These tools are already in place in Aurora and are ready to be customized in DG Starter.

No Vendor Lock-In

Islandora is open source and built on Drupal, so you’re never tied to a single vendor. You own your content and code, and can work with any provider, or your own team, for support and customization. This flexibility protects your investment and ensures long-term sustainability.

Final thoughts

If you’re looking for a digital repository that gives you full control over your metadata, supports a wide range of formats, and is backed by strong open-source communities, Islandora is a compelling choice. And at the heart of that choice is Drupal.

With Aurora, we offer a cloud-hosted, streamlined version of Islandora for institutions who want a fast, low-maintenance setup. With DG Starter, we offer a flexible foundation for organizations that need advanced customization or want to build on their own terms.

No matter the path, the power and flexibility of Drupal are what make Islandora, and our clients, successful.

Ready to see what Islandora can do for your organization?

Whether you’re managing a single repository or supporting a multi-institution consortium, Islandora offers the flexibility, scalability, and support you need. Contact Discovery Garden to schedule a demo, start a project discovery session, or learn more about how we can help you build a future-proof digital repository.