Development of tools for the legally compliant presentation of multimedia objects with Kitodo.Presentation

• Applicants: Dr. Sabine Gehrlein; Katrin Stump; Professor Robert Zepf
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 554768123

The project aims to extend the free presentation module Kitodo.Presentation of the open-source digitization software suite Kitodo in order to enable the secure provision of objects that are still under legal protection. Rights enforcement is to be implemented in stages at various levels, from basic file access to meta and structural data, facsimiles and full texts to collection and object-specific access mechanisms. The restrictions to be implemented are to be realized as individual measures independent of each other, so that they can be flexibly combined in order to serve the widest possible range of application scenarios on the one hand, but also to achieve the maximum possible openness of the collections on the other. Instead of full blocking of entire documents or (partial) collections due to legal restrictions, possibilities should be created to exploit the given legal framework as far as possible, i.e. to make the affected objects accessible to the widest possible audience with the maximum permissible range of functions. The project is based on preliminary work carried out by other projects applied for in the pilot phase, in particular in work areas 1 and 2. There are particularly synergetic links to the projects applied for on the description of rights-managed objects using standardized rights information (SLUB, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) and the development of an interoperable software solution for the rights management of digitised material (ZBW Kiel), which are developing complementary components of a complete digitization workflow for legally protected objects. A prerequisite for the project is standardized, machine-readable rights encoding, as is to be qualified in work area 2, as this represents the interface between the intellectual description of the legal situation and its secure implementation in technical systems. A particularly close exchange will therefore be necessary with the projects applied for in work area 2, which is why institutional overlaps are also planned here. In addition to the basic and universally required access mechanisms such as IP-based restricted provision (e.g. for campus licenses, geofencing, etc.), account-based access (e.g. for research groups, library members and individuals) and time-controlled release (e.g. for embargo or copyright periods), further specific requirements are to be expected from the use cases to be developed in the projects in work area 1. These are to be collected, technically evaluated, prioritized and, if necessary, implemented during the course of the project.

• DFG Programme: Cataloguing and Digitisation (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)