Using "Curator's Workbench" on Ubuntu 12.04 (precise)

[^rooker]

I stumbled over a tool called "Curator's Workbench" (from UNC-Chapel Hill) which might be interesting for digital archiving.

In order to run the Workbench, you need to install Java 7 Runtime-Environment (JRE), and tell your system to use JRE7 (rather than JRE6):

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$ apt-get install openjdk-7-jre

NOTE: Many HowTos for installing Java7 on e.g. Ubuntu tell you how to install Oracle's JRE
but Oracle's Java version still contains some precompiled binaries that Sun didn't have copyright to release under an open-source license.

Now, use "update-alternatives" to point your default "java" executable symlink to version 7:

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sudo update-alternatives --config java

This will present you with some options for java executables that might look like this:

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  Selection    Path                                            Priority   Status
------------------------------------------------------------
* 0            /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk-amd64/jre/bin/java   1061      auto mode
  1            /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk-amd64/jre/bin/java   1061      manual mode
  2            /usr/lib/jvm/java-7-openjdk-amd64/jre/bin/java   1051      manual mode

Select option #2 (java-7-openjdk-amd64).

Now download the GNU/Linux binaries of Curator's Workbench from their site:
http://www.lib.unc.edu/software/

Unpack it and start the executable "Workbench".

Enjoy!

[^rooker]

The source code of "Curator's Workbench" can be found on their git repositories.

Clone the repo to your local disk:

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git clone https://github.com/UNC-Libraries/Curators-Workbench.git

NOTE: Unfortunately, the Workbench is under an Apache 2 license. That is a Free Software compatible license, but it might allow someone to use UNC's great work and release a modified version under a closed, proprietary license.
That could put archives back into vendor-lock-in situations