Mukurtu

We have completely rebuilt Mukurtu CMS from the ground up in Drupal 7, one of the most feature-rich and community supported open source content management systems on the planet. At the 1.0 release, Mukurtu CMS will be available as a free download that you can use on your own laptop or server, but it will also be offered on the exciting new Pantheon hosting platform, through our partnership with the University of California, Berkeley. Mukurtu CMS comes with professionally designed themes that will jumpstart your journey toward making beautiful sites in a few hours instead of days or weeks.

Mukurtu Core is a set of frequently used but flexible terms, categories and protocols that can easily be adapted and mapped to a variety of uses. Many Mukurtu CMS users will find it convenient and necessary to work with international metadata standards, such as EAD, MARC and Dublin Core. Mukurtu eXtended are preset field configurations that can be turned on or off depending on what standards you require. Mukurtu leverages Drupal's renowned free tagging, commenting, and version controlled multi-authored fields to support and encourage rich engagements and discussions, folksonomies and community defined traditional knowledge entries, all bound together in an easy-to-follow user interface.

Mukurtu CMS supports a wide selection of file formats including PDF, image, movie, office documents, and many more. Media files can be imported in batch, and multiple files can be associated with a single digital heritage item, or related to others in almost unlimited configurations. In fact, media files can “live” anywhere on the Internet. For example, videos can be linked from YouTube, and media files can reside in digital repositories managed by your institution or a partner. Mukurtu media is perfect for users who have limited storage space, or who are working with existing archival collections.

Mukurtu CMS promotes responsible interchanges and sharing of Indigenous digital heritage, and what better way to present these invaluable collections then through beautifully designed, curated exhibits? Mukurtu Exhibit is an integrated interface that makes it possible for communities to design and build curated digital collections directly from their archives, with all the cultural protocols intact. Mukurtu Exhibit allows you to plan, experiment, negotiate and redefine exhibits, deciding precisely what content should be shared more broadly or specifically viewable by particular communities and under certain conditions. In fact, the entire design process can be done right from within Mukurtu CMS and unveiled to your audience with one click. Coming soon.

Mukurtu CMS makes it possible to bring together digital heritage no matter where the content is stored. Relate YouTube videos, archives, even files stored on a local hard drive or images found through a Google search. The choice is up to you. By version 1.0, Mukurtu CMS will offer a host of services for accessing and sharing digital heritage with point and click ease.

Mukurtu Maps take advantage of the latest breakthroughs in online and offline mapping, with fine-grained control over what digital heritage you relate to location data. We recognize that associating provenience information poses challenges for some location sensitive Indigenous digital heritage. Mukurtu CMS offers a variety of tools for adding map information to digital heritage, with controls that help you securely define locations and allow you to produce multiple maps for alternative viewing and storytelling. Coming soon.

Mukurtu CMS offers many options for organizing and managing digital heritage into collections, both personal and formal. Individual digital heritage items can be created out of multiple media items, each with their own descriptive and technical metadata. Select multiple digital heritage items and create collections as new objects that can be selected and viewed just like single items, create infinite viewing and sharing possibilities. Coming soon.

Coming in Fall 2012, Mukurtu goes mobile. Stay tuned for details on this exciting development.