Google Analytics Migrating URLs from CONTENTdm to Islandora - Power Library
Home > For Librarians > PA Photos & Documents > Documentation > Migrating URLs from CONTENTdm to Islandora

Migrating URLs from CONTENTdm to Islandora

If you have existing links to records in CONTENTdm you will want to update them to the new Islandora URLs. The CONTENTdm server will permanently sunset on May 30th, 2021. Participants are strongly advised to update their links from CONTENTdm to Islandora as soon as possible. This requires a few small adjustments to your existing URLs as outlined below.

Please note that you may obtain collection-level Islandora links for your institution by performing the following steps:

  1. Visit: https://powerlibrary.org/collections/
  2. Select the ‘List by Institution’ toggle
  3. Select your institution from the alphabetical list
  4. Select the ‘new tab’ icon that appears adjacent to your institution name/number of collections. This will open a new tab that displays all of your collections.
  5. You can then copy the URL for each collection via right-click and ‘copy link’ on the link or by selecting the collection link and copying the URL from the browser address bar.

For additional details and to construct record-level links, please see below.

Sample CONTENTdm URL:

http://digitalcollections.powerlibrary.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/cpaphoto/id/26

Below are the components of a CONTENTdm URL as illustrated in the above example.

Main CONTENTdm site URL: http://digitalcollections.powerlibrary.org/

  1. Main URL: http://digitalcollections.powerlibrary.org/
    Add the letter s after http and update “collections” to “archives”: https://digitalarchives.powerlibrary.org/
  2. CONTENTdm Path: cdm/ref/collection/
    Needs to be updated to a new Islandora path:
    papd/islandora/object/papd%3A
  3. CONTENTdm Collection ID: cpaphoto
    This should remain the same for most collections. A small number of collection IDs changed during the migration. If making a new URL fails to work, check your collection URL in Islandora (last few characters in URL after “papd%3A”) to see if your collection ID changed.
  4. Item ID: id/26
    This changes to _26. The item ID number stays constant across CONTENTdm and Islandora while the “id/” is replaced with an underscore.

The new Islandora URL will be:

https://digitalarchives.powerlibrary.org/papd/islandora/object/papd%3Acpaphoto_26

Easy Fix:

You can use this URL:
https://digitalarchives.powerlibrary.org/papd/islandora/object/papd%3A
and simply add the CollectionID_ItemID from your old URLs.

As you update the URLs for other Islandora records, the item and collection IDs will change (the latter only if you have multiple collections).

If you want to view a collection’s main page, you can simply remove the item ID as illustrated below:

https://digitalarchives.powerlibrary.org/papd/islandora/object/papd%3Apcalo-ishc

This may be helpful if you need to update collection-level URLs.