Unit 12 My Blog

Blog Assignment – Week 2
Although the files are large, it’s possible to create a working virtual machine for download and playback in your Virtualization software (although in practice, it’s almost as much work and sometimes difficult to troubleshoot). In your blog, discuss the possibility of downloading a pre-installed VM versus building your own, from a learning and pedagogical perspective. Would preconfigured solutions provide more time to concentrate on the collection? Or, do you think you are losing the opportunity to learn about how a repository is structured and modified by not building it from scratch? Would you have a preference for one or the other with respect to your current computer skills and learning preferences

My comments

A pre-installed VM would save a lot of time on the “preliminaries” and allow us to really get into the features of Omeka, DSpace, EPrints or Drupal. Chances are those of us who are fortunate enough to work in a digital or institutional repository will not be called upon to install or configure the software to the server. IR server chores will be the responsibility of campus IT and or the Network Admin not library staff. Library staff will be left to figure out how to use the repository software and how to best add deposits to the collection, embargo items and comply with IP laws and rules, and add metadata to collections. Appraising items, planning projects while also constructing special vocabularies will all be on the agenda of the IR staff. We spent some time on these things during 672 and 675 and since we are all working professionals, a lot of the metadata creation and planning responsibilities are things we are doing for items in our print or analog collections. These skills should transfer well to digital collections work.

On the other hand learning about the configuration issues of digital collections, using our linux command skills , or writing some code to get things done rather than waiting for IT are all really excellent competencies for successful managemet of a digital repository. The logic and thinking behind OAI-PMH would be difficult to understand unless we had installed the harvester and then harvested metadata. How metadata is stored and retrieved and rearranged would be fairly opaque without having first explored MySQL and learned how to build tables and databases. Maybe a future class could do both although I can't see how any more material could fit into this course.

Not sure where I land on this, but I am really am grateful for having experimented with installing Ubuntu servers on my VM and then downloading and installing the repository software on the VM. Without doing these chores and getting under the hood of the IR , I would be a whole lot less sophisticated about how digital repositories work, the limitations of certain software and the resources available to solve problems .

I will have to experiment a lot on my own to try to improve my repository software competencies. The weekly technical activities instructions will be a great reference resource to look back at and equipped with what we have learned in this class I can take that knowledge and build on it.

Unit 11 wk 1 a review

All of the open source digital repository platforms have been impressive in one way or another. Each product has a large community of code writers, and users that should ensure a continuous stream of new and useful features. I enjoyed learning about and experimenting with the OAI harvester in week 10. The concept of using OAI-PMH to aggregate metadata, typified by the PKPHarvester we installed on a virtual machine in Unit 10, is an effective method of finding digital resources and enabling scholarly communications. Without exposing digital collections to metadata harvesting systems, digital content would be hidden from view in many thousands of information silos.

At this point in my understanding of digital collections, dspace and eprints are the best choices for my digital collection. The two platforms are the most popular open source repositories in the world with over 1,000 sites deploying one or the other. Both are, in my judgment, a lot easier to add items to than drupal or omeka. The work flow template in eprints is a very helpful tool allowing for the easy deposit of scholarly content using a standardized methodology. Embedding links to the SHERPA RoMEO rights directory is a great feature in eprints as is classifying content by the authoritative LCC schema. The more content and the more standardized the metadata the more effective the respository will be as a domain and as a node within a large scale distributed digital ecosystem.

DSpace is also relatively easy to use, search, and deposit items. The look and feel of DSpace is a little too cookie cutter but skilled developers can modify the DSpace platform to look and feel like a slick commercial website. The DSpace handle.net system ensures reliable persistent access to digital objects by popular search engines. The communities and collections architecture of DSpace is logical and transparent. There are a lot of good features, and more experience using and depositing to a DSpace repository would find more things to admire about DSpace.

Like library, archives and museum repository managers in the real world , I have found ePrints and DSpace to be very attractive systems and it will be difficult to select one over the other for my digital collection.