Michele Kimpton, Executive Director of the DSpace Foundation, gave gave a talk about the foundation at the DSpace UK & Ireland User Group meeting in early July.
Her PowerPoint presentation is now available.
Source: Lewis, Stuart. "Presentations from Recent DSpace UK & Ireland User Group Meeting," Unilever Centre for Molecular Informatics, Cambridge—Jim Downing, 11 July 2007.
UKOLN and JISC CETIS have released An Ecological Approach to Repository and Service Interactions, Draft Version 0.9 for comment.
Here’s an excerpt from the "Not the Executive Summary" section:
This work began with the need to express something of how and why repositories and services interact. As a community we have well understood technical models and architectures that provide mechanisms for interoperability. The actual interactions that occur, however, are not widely understood and knowledge about them is not often shared. This is in part because we tend to share in the abstract through architectures and use cases, articulating interactions or connections requires an engagement with specific details. . . .
Ecology is the study of systems that are complex, dynamic, and full of interacting entities and processes. Although the nature of these interactions and processes may be highly detailed, a higher level view of them is accessible and intuitive. We think that ecology and the ecosystems it studies may offer a useful analogy to inform the task of understanding and articulating the interactions between users, repositories, and services and the information environments in which they take place. This report outlines some concepts from ecology that may be useful and suggests some definitions for a common conversation about the use of this metaphor.
We hope that this report suggests an additional way to conceptualise and analyse interactions and provide a common vocabulary for an ecological approach. It should as a minimum provoke and support some useful discussions about networks and communities.
A podcast of Chris Rusbridge’s "Curation of Scientific Data: Challenges for Institutions and their Repositories" presentation at The Adaptable Repository conference is now available. Rusbridge is Director of the Digital Curation Centre in the UK.
The PowerPoint for the presentation is also available.
Tim Donohue, Scott Phillips, and Dorothea Salo have published DSpace How-To Guide: Tips and Tricks for Managing Common DSpace Chores (Now Serving DSpace 1.4.2 and Manakin 1.1).
This 55-page booklet, which is under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License, will be a welcome addition to the virtual bookshelves of institutional repository managers struggling with the mysteries of DSpace.
DRAMA (Digital Repository Authorization Middleware Architecture) has released Fiddler, a beta version of its mura Fedora front-end that provides access control, authentication, full-text searching and a variety of other functions. DRAMA is a sub-project of RAMP (Research Activityflow and Middleware Priorities Project).
Here’s an excerpt from the news item that describes Fiddler’s features:
- Hierarchical access control enforcement: Policies can be applied at the collection level, object level or datastream level. . . .
- Improved access control interface: One can now view existing access control of a particular user or group for a given datastream, object or collection. . . .
- User-centric GUI: mura only presents users with operations for which they have permissions.
- XForms Metadata Input: We employ an XForms engine (Orbeon) for metadata input. XForms allow better user interaction, validation and supports any XML-based metadata schemas (such as MARC or MODS).
- LDAP Filter for Fedora: The current Fedora LDAP filter (in version 2.2) does not authenticate properly, so we have developed a new LDAP filter to fix this problem.
- Local authentication for DAR and ASM: In addition to Shibboleth authentication, the DAR and ASM can be configured to use a local authentication source (eg. via a local LDAP).
- Generic XACML Vocabulary: XACML policies are now expressed in a generic vocabulary rather than Fedora specific ones. . . .
- XACML Optimization: We have optimized of the evaluation engine by employing a cache with user configurable time-to-live. We have also greatly reduced the time for policies matching with DB XML, through the use of bind parameters in our queries.
- Flexible mapping of Fedora actions to new Apache Axis handlers: Axis is the SOAP engine that Fedora employs to provide its web services. The new flexibility allows new handlers to be easily plugged into Fedora to support new features that follow the same Interceptor pattern as our authorization framework.
- Version control: mura now supports version control.
- Full-text search: We enabled full-text search by incorporating Fedoragsearch package.
The Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR) has released Report of the Sustainability Guidelines for Australian Repositories Project (SUGAR).
Here’s an excerpt from the report:
The Sustainability Guidelines for Australian Repositories service (SUGAR)was intended to support people working in tertiary education institutions whose activities do not focus on digital preservation. The target community creates and digitises content for a range of purposes to support learning, teaching and research. While some have access to technical and administrative support many others may not be aware of what they need to know. The typical SUGAR user may have little interest in discussions surrounding metadata, interoperability or digital preservation, and may simply want to know the essential steps involved in achieving the task at hand.
A key challenge for SUGAR was to provide a suitable level and amount of information to meet the immediate focus of the user and their level of expertise while introducing and encouraging consideration of issues of digital sustainability. SUGAR was also intended to stand alone as an online service unsupported by a helpdesk.
The UNESCO Memory of the World Programme, with the support of the Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories, has published Towards an Open Source Repository and Preservation System: Recommendations on the Implementation of an Open Source Digital Archival and Preservation System and on Related Software Development.
Here’s an excerpt from the Executive Summary and Recommendations:
This report defines the requirements for a digital archival and preservation system using standard hardware and describes a set of open source software which could used to implement it. There are two aspects of this report that distinguish it from other approaches. One is the complete or holistic approach to digital preservation. The report recognises that a functioning preservation system must consider all aspects of a digital repositories; Ingest, Access, Administration, Data Management, Preservation Planning and Archival Storage, including storage media and management software. Secondly, the report argues that, for simple digital objects, the solution to digital preservation is relatively well understood, and that what is needed are affordable tools, technology and training in using those systems.
An assumption of the report is that there is no ultimate, permanent storage media, nor will there be in the foreseeable future. It is instead necessary to design systems to manage the inevitable change from system to system. The aim and emphasis in digital preservation is to build sustainable systems rather than permanent carriers. . . .
The way open source communities, providers and distributors achieve their aims provides a model on how a sustainable archival system might work, be sustained, be upgraded and be developed as required. Similarly, many cultural institutions, archives and higher education institutions are participating in the open source software communities to influence the direction of the development of those softwares to their advantage, and ultimately to the advantage of the whole sector.
A fundamental finding of this report is that a simple, sustainable system that provides strategies to manage all the identified functions for digital preservation is necessary. It also finds that for simple discrete digital objects this is nearly possible. This report recommends that UNESCO supports the aggregation and development of an open source archival system, building on, and drawing together existing open source programs.
This report also recommends that UNESCO participates through its various committees, in open source software development on behalf of the countries, communities, and cultural institutions, who would benefit from a simple, yet sustainable, digital archival and preservation system. . . .
JISC has released its Dealing with Data: Roles, Rights, Responsibilities and Relationships: Consultancy Report, which was written as part of its Digital Repositories Programme’s Data Cluster Consultancy.
Here’s an excerpt from the Executive Summary:
This Report explores the roles, rights, responsibilities and relationships of institutions, data centres and other key stakeholders who work with data. It concentrates primarily on the UK scene with some reference to other relevant experience and opinion, and is framed as "a snapshot" of a relatively fast-moving field. . . .
The Report is largely based on two methodological approaches: a consultation workshop and a number of semi-structured interviews with stakeholder representatives.
It is set within the context of the burgeoning "data deluge" emanating from e-Science applications, increasing momentum behind open access policy drivers for data, and developments to define requirements for a co-ordinated e-infrastructure for the UK. The diversity and complexity of data are acknowledged, and developing typologies are referenced.
The Council of Australian University Librarians has released Australasian Digital Theses Program: Membership Survey 2006.
Here’s an excerpt from the "Key Findings" section:
1. The average percentage of records for digital theses added to ADT is 95% when digital submission is mandatory and 17% when it is not mandatory. . . .
2. 59% of respondents will have mandatory digital submission in place in 2007.
3. With this level of mandatory submission it is predicted that 60% of all theses produced in Australia and New Zealand in 2007 will have a digital copy recorded in ADT. . . .
5. The overwhelming majority of respondents offer a mediated submission service, either only having a mediated service or offering both mediated and self-submission services. When mediated and self-submission are both available, the percentage self-submitted is polarised with some achieving over a 75% self-submission rate.
6. Over half the respondents have a repository already and most are using it to manage digital theses.
7. 87% will have a repository by the end of this year, and the rest are in the initial planning stage.
The JISC-funded SPECTRa project has released Project SPECTRa (Submission, Preservation and Exposure of Chemistry Teaching and Research Data): JISC Final Report, March 2007.
Here’s an excerpt from the Executive Summary:
Project SPECTRa’s principal aim was to facilitate the high-volume ingest and subsequent reuse of experimental data via institutional repositories, using the DSpace platform, by developing Open Source software tools which could easily be incorporated within chemists’ workflows. It focussed on three distinct areas of chemistry research—synthetic organic chemistry, crystallography and computational chemistry.
SPECTRa was funded by JISC’s Digital Repositories Programme as a joint project between the libraries and chemistry departments of the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London, in collaboration with the eBank UK project. . . .
Surveys of chemists at Imperial and Cambridge investigated their current use of computers and the Internet and identified specific data needs. The survey’s main conclusions were:
- Much data is not stored electronically (e.g. lab books, paper copies of spectra)
- A complex list of data file formats (particularly proprietary binary formats) being used
- A significant ignorance of digital repositories
- A requirement for restricted access to deposited experimental data
Distributable software tool development using Open Source code was undertaken to facilitate deposition into a repository, guided by interviews with key researchers. The project has provided tools which allow for the preservation aspects of data reuse. All legacy chemical file formats are converted to the appropriate Chemical Markup Language scheme to enable automatic data validation, metadata creation and long-term preservation needs. . . .
The deposition process adopted the concept of an "embargo repository" allowing unpublished or commercially sensitive material, identified through metadata, to be retained in a closed access environment until the data owner approved its release. . . .
Among the project’s findings were the following:
- it has integrated the need for long-term management of experimental chemistry data with the maturing technology and organisational capability of digital repositories;
- scientific data repositories are more complex to build and maintain than are those designed primarily for text-based materials;
- the specific needs of individual scientific disciplines are best met by discipline-specific tools, though this is a resource-intensive process;
- institutional repository managers need to understand the working practices of researchers in order to develop repository services that meet their requirements;
- IPR issues relating to the ownership and reuse of scientific data are complex, and would benefit from authoritative guidance based on UK and EU law.
The JISC-funded Rights and Rewards Project at Loughborough University has made its proof-of-concept PEDESTAL system public, which uses Web 2.0 concepts in a learning repository.
Here’s an excerpt from the About: PEDESTAL page:
PEDESTAL is a demonstrator teaching and learning material repository. PEDESTAL is a service, which has been developed by the Engineering Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (EngCETL), for Loughborough staff to share their teaching material and expertise with other peers. . . .
PEDESTAL is not just about the sharing content, each user has their own blog which can be used to capture user’s thoughts and interests. Links to useful documents or webpage’s can be recorded, which also may be of interest to many others.PEDESTAL boasts a search mechanism. Within PEDESTAL, a search may retrieve more than just content. For example, a search using the term ‘Digital Photography’ may return;
- Items to embed in to teaching (textual resources, diagrams, images etc)
- Items to inform the teaching and learning process (teaching exemplars, how to guides)
- A list of people who are interested in ‘Digital Photography’
- A list of blog postings that have the term ‘Digital Photography’ within them
PEDESTAL is much different than a Virtual Learning Environment (Learn). The latter is structured around course modules and is a mechanism which delivers teaching material (usually specific to a course or module) to students. PEDESTAL is structured around people—i.e. the users. Each user is given a personal profile page which can be customised to show their teaching and research interests.
For further information, see the About: 10 Things About PEDESTAL page.
The Open Archives Initiative—Object Reuse and Exchange has released Compound Information Objects: An OAI-ORE Perspective by Carl Lagoze and Herbert Van de Sompel.
Here’s an excerpt from the document’s "Introduction and Motivation" section:
In summary, the web architecture expresses the notion of linked URI-identified resources. Information systems can leverage this architecture to publish the components of a compound object and thereby make them available to web clients and services. But due to the absence of commonly accepted standards, the notion of an identified compound object with a distinct boundary and typed relationships among its component resources is lost.
The absence of these standards affects the functionality of a number of existing and possible web services and applications. Crawler-based search engines might be more useful if the granularity of their result sets corresponded to compound objects (a book or chapter, in this example) rather than individual resources (single pages). The ranking algorithms of these search engines might improve if the links among the components of a compound object were treated differently than links to the object as a whole, or if the number of in-links to the various component resources was accumulated to the level of the compound object instead of counted separately. Citation analysis systems would also benefit from a mechanism for citing the compound object itself, rather than arbitrary parts of the object. Finally, a standard for representing compound objects might enable a new class of "whole object" services such as "preserve a compound object".
The Library of Congress’ Network Development and MARC Standards Office unit has released Implementing the PREMIS Data Dictionary: A Survey of Approaches.
Here is an excerpt from the report’s preface:
The Preservation Metadata: Implementation Strategies (PREMIS) Working Group developed the Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata, which is a specification containing a set of "core" preservation metadata elements that has broad applicability within the digital preservation community. The PREMIS Data Dictionary (PDD) was released in May 2005 along with a set of XML schemas to support its implementation. Since that time, institutions have begun to implement preservation metadata by providing content for semantic units expressed in the data dictionary or comparing it with planned or existing systems for long-term preservation. . . .
The Library of Congress, as part of the PREMIS maintenance activity, commissioned Deborah Woodyard-Robinson to provide this study to explore how institutions have implemented the PREMIS semantic units. . . . In this study sixteen repositories have been surveyed about their interpretation and application of the PDD, with an analysis then made on how the PREMIS core fits with the functions of a preservation repository and which PDD semantic units will be most relevant to certain types of repositories.
The Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR) has made a podcast of Susan Gibbons’s "Repositories as Platforms for Researchers e-Portfolios" presentation at the Adaptable Repository workshop at the University of Sydney.
Powerpoints from the workshop’s presentations are also available.
The JISC-funded MIDESS Project is examining issues related to the management of digital audio, images, video, and other digital content in distributed digital repositories as well as at the national level. It is being conducted by the London School of Economics, University College London, the University of Birmingham, and the University of Leeds.
Here is an excerpt from the "Aims and Objectives of the MIDESS Project" page:
The project has produced a number of interesting documents, especially the detailed workpackages, which deal with issues such as digital preservation, enterprise storage, intellectual property, and user requirements.
The PerX (Pilot Engineering Repository Xsearch) project has released its Report on Embedding and Reusing PerX in a VLE. (A "VLE" is a virtual learning environment.)
Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:
This report presents the reusable middleware we have used to embed PerX functionality into the University VLE, VISION, a commercial VLE Blackboard system. We have done our best to use service oriented architectures (SOA) as possible. We argue that by using open source and open standards approaches rather than software and practices developed specifically for a particular VLE product, it is possible to obtain open reusable middleware that can simplify the DLVLE integration and bridge the functionality of both environments. We hope that our methodology can provide a common foundation on which a variety of institutions may build their own customized middleware to integrate scholarly objects in VLEs.
Here’s a brief description of the PerX project from its home page:
The PerX project has developed a pilot service which provides subject resource discovery across a series of repositories of interest to the engineering learning and research communities. This pilot was used as a test-bed to explore the practical issues that would be encountered when considering the possibility of full scale subject resource discovery services.
The Cairo Project has released Cairo Tools Survey: A Survey of Tools Applicable to the Preparation of Digital Archives for Ingest into a Preservation Repository. It has also released a related report, Cairo Use Cases: A Survey of User Scenarios Applicable to the Cairo Ingest Tool.
Here’s a description of the Cairo Project from its home page:
Cairo will develop a tool for ingesting complex collections of born-digital materials, with basic descriptive, preservation and relationship metadata, into a preservation repository. The project is based on needs identified by the JISC-funded Paradigm project and the Wellcome Library’s Digital Curation in Action project. It is a key building block in the partner institutions’ strategy to develop digital repository architectures which can support the development of digital collections over the long-term.
The Irish Virtual Research Library has released its Project Workbook, which provides detailed information about its policies and procedures.
Here’s an excerpt from the Irish Virtual Research Library’s home page that describes the project:
The Irish Virtual Research Library & Archive (IVRLA) is a major digitisation and digital object management project launched in UCD in January 2005. The project was conceived as a means to preserve elements of UCD’s main repositories and increase and facilitate access to this material through the adoption of digitisation technologies.
Additionally the project will undertake dedicated research into the area of interacting with and enhancing the use of digital objects in a research environment through the development of a digital repository. When fully implemented, the IVRLA will be one of the first comprehensive digital primary source repositories in Ireland, and will advance the research agenda into the use and challenges affecting this new method of research, and of digital curation over the coming years.
The REMAP Project at the University of Hull has been funded by JISC investigate how record management and digital preservation functions can be best supported in digital repositories. It utilizes the Fedora system.
Here’s an except from the Project Aims page (I have added the links in this excerpt):
The REMAP project has the following aims:
- To develop Records Management and Digital Preservation (RMDP) workflow(s) in order to understand how a digital repository can support these activities
- To embed digital repository interaction within working practices for RMDP purposes
- To further develop the use of a WSBPEL orchestration tool to work with external Web services, including the PRONOM Web services, to provide appropriate metadata and file information for RMDP
- To develop and test a notification layer that can interact with the orchestration tool and allow RSS
syndication to individuals alerting them to RMDP tasks- To develop and test an intermediate persistence layer to underpin the notification layer and interact
with the WSBPEL orchestration tool to allow orchestrated workflows to take place over time- To test and validate the use of the enhanced WSBPEL tool with institutional staff involved in RMDP activities
Led by UKOLN, The JISC SWORD (Simple Web-service Offering Repository Deposit) Project is developing "a prototype ‘smart deposit’ tool" to "facilitate easier and more effective population of repositories."
Here’s an excerpt from the project plan:
The effective and efficient population of repositories is a key concern for the repositories community. Deposit is a crucial step in the repository workflow; without it a repository has no content and can fulfill no further function. Currently most repositories exist in a fairly linear context, accepting deposits from a single interface and putting them into a single repository. Further deployment of repositories, encouraged by JISC and other funders, means that this situation is changing and we are beginning to see an increasingly complex and dynamic ecology of interactions between repositories and other services and systems. By and large developers are not creating repository systems and software from scratch, rather they are considering how repositories interface with other applications within institutions and the wider information landscape. A single repository, or multiple repositories, might interact with other components, such as VLEs, authoring tools, packaging tools, name authority services, classification services and research systems. In terms of content, resources may be deposited in a repository by both human and software agents, e.g. packaging tools that push content into repositories or a drag-and-drop desktop tool. The type of resource being deposited will also influence the choice of deposit mechanism. If the resources are complex packaged objects then a web service will need to support the ingest of multiple packaging standards.
There is currently no standard mechanism for accepting content into repositories, yet there already exists a stable and widely implemented service for harvesting metadata from repositories (OAI-PMH—Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting). This project will implement a similarly open protocol or specification for deposit. By taking a similar approach, the project and the resulting protocol and implementations will gain easier acceptance by a community already familiar with the OAI-PMH.
This project aims to develop a Simple Web-service Offering Repository Deposit (SWORD)—a lightweight deposit protocol that will be implemented as a simple web service within EPrints, DSpace, Fedora and IntraLibrary and tested against a prototype ‘smart deposit’ tool. The project plans to take forward the lightweight protocol originally formulated by a small group working within the Digital Repositories Programme (the ‘Deposit API’ work) . The project is aligned with the Object Reuse and Exchange (ORE) Mellon-funded two-year project by the Open Archives Initiative, which commenced in October 2006. Members of the SWORD project team are represented on its Technical and Liaison Committees. . . . . The SWORD project is not attempting to duplicate work being done being done by ORE, but seeks to build on existing work to support UK-specific requirements whilst feeding into the ongoing ORE project.
Michele Kimpton, formerly of the Internet Archive, has been appointed the Executive Director of the newly formed DSpace nonprofit organization.
Here’e an excerpt from the announcement:
I am happy to report that we are making good progress on establishing the new non-profit organization, and I would like to take this opportunity to announce that Michele Kimpton has accepted the position as Executive Director for the organization. The DSpace non-profit corporation will initially provide organizational, legal and financial support for the DSpace open source software project. Prior to joining DSpace, Michele Kimpton was one of the founding Directors at Internet Archive, in charge of Web archiving technology and services. . . .
Michele developed an organization within Internet Archive to help support and fund open source software and web archiving programs, so she comes to us with a lot of experience in both open source software and long-term digital curation. Her organization worked primarily with National Libraries and Archives around the world, so she is familiar with large, widely diverse and distributed communities. Michele was one of the co-founders of the IIPC ( International Internet Preservation Consortium, netpreserve.org), whose mission is to work collaboratively to develop tools, standards and processes for archiving and preservation of web material.
The DSpace non-profit corporation is in the final stages of completing filing status as a not-for-profit corporation of Massachusetts. By summer 2007 we expect to have this legal entity in place, and a complete Board of Directors. Both MIT and Hewlett Packard have provided the start up funding to establish the organization over the next several years. . . .
Position papers from the NSF/JISC Repositories Workshop are now available.
Here’s an excerpt from the Workshop’s Welcome and Themes page:
Here is some background information. A series of recent studies and reports have highlighted the ever-growing importance for all academic fields of data and information in digital formats. Studies have looked at digital information in science and in the humanities; at the role of data in Cyberinfrastructure; at repositories for large-scale digital libraries; and at the challenges of archiving and preservation of digital information. The goal of this workshop is to unite these separate studies. The NSF and JISC share two principal objectives: to develop a road map for research over the next ten years and what to support in the near term.
Here are the position papers:
Presentations from Friday’s sessions of the 5th Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication in Geneva are now available.
Here are a few highlights from this major conference:
(You may want to download PowerPoint Viewer 2007 if you don’t have PowerPoint 2007).
Presentations from Thursday’s sessions of the 5th Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication in Geneva are now available.
Here are a few highlights from this major conference:
(You may want to download PowerPoint Viewer 2007 if you don’t have PowerPoint 2007).
The OpenDOAR project has announced the availability of an API for accessing digital repository data in their database.
Here’s an excerpt from the press release:
OpenDOAR, as a SHERPA project, is pleased to announce the release of an API that lets developers use OpenDOAR data in their applications. It is a machine-to-machine interface that can run a wide variety of queries against the OpenDOAR Database and get back XML data. Developers can choose to receive just repository titles & URLs, all the available OpenDOAR data, or intermediate levels of detail. They can then incorporate the output into their own applications and ‘mash-ups’, or use it to control processes such as OAI-PMH harvesting. . . .
OpenDOAR is a continuing project hosted at the University of Nottingham under the SHERPA Partnership. OpenDOAR maintains and builds on a quality-assured list of the world’s Open Access Repositories. OpenDOAR acts as a bridge between repository administrators and the service providers who make use of information held in repositories to offer search and other services to researchers and scholars worldwide.
A key feature of OpenDOAR is that all of the repositories we list have been visited by project staff, tested and assessed by hand. We currently decline about a quarter of candidate sites as being broken, empty, out of scope, etc. This gives a far higher quality assurance to the listings we hold than results gathered by just automatic harvesting. OpenDOAR has now surveyed over 1,100 repositories, producing a classified Directory of over 800 freely available archives of academic information.
