Kete

I recently become aware of an interesting content management system called Kete, which was developed for the Kete Horowhenua site in New Zealand. It's a repository and discovery service that supports uploading and metadata creation through a web interface. It supports the inclusion of:

• Images
• Audio recordings
• Video recordings
  
• Documents
  
• URLs for web resources

Metadata can be "locked" so only the creator can edit it, or be open for any to edit. They are collecting some amazing biographical details for their Anzac (veterans) collection through the community. Every "topic" (a subject, a place, a person) can have its own discussion.

Kete Horowhenua was developed with Ruby on Rails, utilizes Zebra z39.50 full text indexing engine developed by IndexData, is fully compatible with Koha, and will be released under a GNU General Public License (GPL). The Kete software is available for download. They are in the process of building a release of the code without the Horowhenua project customizations that can be deployed using a web based wizard that supports customization. They are looking for funding to support this work, as they admit that they underestimated the development needs. They are even accepting PayPal donations to help the work along!

It's an interesting looking site and tool, but I don't know how much is specific to the Horowhenua version and what will be in the generalized version. The browse UI could use a little refinement (I couldn;t figure out how to sort, or if you can sort), but there's a lot of promise here.