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Kevin,<br><br>
The Metadata Services Unit in the MIT libraries recently completed a
DSpace submission project for the Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA) that
encountered the same organizational considerations that you're working
through. SMA wanted to submit articles from conference proceedings
for the past three years. Each conference was organized into five
subject areas. We made each subject area a collection and added
each article to the appropriate collection as an item, capturing metadata
at the level of organization. The years are not architecturally
distinct in this community, but the browse by date feature allows for
date-based organizational views of the material.<br><br>
I think of the differences between the files that comprise an item as
being trivial. The item is the conceptually unique object. It
doesn't make sense to me let papers expressing different ides be part of
the same item. Practically, search and discovery of articles that
are files just doesn't work. That being said I think that SMA, and
likely your conference are what is intended as a community. Which
leaves us to fit the rest of the hierarchical levels of a community's
objects into the one collection layer. If you can, I recommend
having a look at the SMA collection at MIT's DSpace,
<a href="http://dspace.mit.edu/" eudora="autourl">http://dspace.mit.edu/</a><br><br>
Rob Wolfe<br>
Metadata Specialist<br>
MIT Libraries<br><br>
At 05:02 PM 3/12/2004 -0500, Petsche, Kevin F wrote:<br>
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<font face="arial" size=2>Good day!<br>
</font><br>
<font face="arial" size=2> <br>
</font><br>
<font face="arial" size=2>Our implementation of DSpace is currently in
beta testing here at IUPUI
(<a href="http://dspace.iupui.edu/">http://dspace.iupui.edu</a>) and we
are getting a great response from some areas of the campus interested in
placing material in the repository. <br>
</font><br>
<font face="arial" size=2> <br>
</font><br>
<font face="arial" size=2>But I am concerned that I am not setting-up
some of these communities and collections in the best manner.
<br>
</font><br>
<font face="arial" size=2> <br>
</font><br>
<font face="arial" size=2>Let me explain:<br>
</font><br>
<font face="arial" size=2> <br>
</font><br>
<font face="arial" size=2>A few units on campus are wishing to place
conference proceedings for several years into the repository and another
campus-affiliated unit is interested in pursuing the archiving of an
electronic newsletter. The seriality of these projects are causing
me to wonder what the best way to implement these. For example,
there s a unit on campus called the Adult Education Department .
The chair of the department is interested in using DSpace as a repository
and archive of the proceedings for an annual conference that he s very
much involved in, The Midwest Research-to-Practice Conference in Adult,
Continuing and Community Education . It s a two-day conference and
makes available several conference papers each year. <br>
</font><br>
<font face="arial" size=2> <br>
</font><br>
<font face="arial" size=2>Knowing the structure of IDEA and the
relationships among its components (i.e. communities, collections, items
and file), I wonder what the best way to do the above tasks. <br>
</font><br>
<font face="arial" size=2> <br>
</font><br>
<font face="arial" size=2>My inclination is to make an Adult Education
Department community, with a Midwest Research-to-Practice Conference
collection. This then would seem to make each year of the
conference a separate item, with each paper a separate file within each
item (i.e. year). But this gets to be quite awkward. Each of
these implementers wants to give each contributor the ability to submit
their own paper, but my understanding is that this requires each
contributor to have update authorization which then gives them the
ability to delete papers and change the metadata. Further, if this
is the set-up, I have concerns about the metadata description of each
file. It seems to me that we can add a description.toc field to
each item, but these aren t searchable, are they? Further, like any
serial record, there s only a very general ability to describe the item
and not particular topics that rest within each paper or article.
It doesn t seem very satisfying. <br>
</font><br>
<font face="arial" size=2> <br>
</font><br>
<font face="arial" size=2>The other option that I ve contemplated is more
satisfying. It shifts the structure upwards so that each paper or
article is its own item with accompanying metadata. But then each
conference or online newsletter must be its own community with each issue
being the collection. This, it seems to me, muddles the repository
at the front end, as the list of communities then becomes a mixture of
campus departments, newsletters and conferences. Again, this seems
to be a solution that is not very satisfying. <br>
</font><br>
<font face="arial" size=2> <br>
</font><br>
<font face="arial" size=2>Can anyone help me to solve my way through
this? I ve searched through the online documentation and DSpace
Federation site, but can t seem to put my finger on the help I
need. <br>
</font><br>
<font face="arial" size=2> <br>
</font><br>
<font face="arial" size=2>Thanks so much in advance! <br>
</font><br>
<font face="arial" size=2> <br>
</font><br>
<font size=4><b>Kevin<br>
</b></font><br>
<font size=4><b> <br>
</b></font><br>
Kevin Petsche<br><br>
Assistant Librarian<br><br>
Electronic Journals Collection Manager<br><br>
Digital Libraries/Cataloging Teams<br><br>
IUPUI University Library UL1115D<br><br>
755 West Michigan Street<br><br>
Indianapolis, Indiana 46202<br><br>
317.278.2330<br><br>
317.278.0368 (fax)<br><br>
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