[Dspace-general] Does a custom document lifecycle feature exist in dspace?

[MacKenzie Smith]

Hi Simon,

Discussions of workflow in the context of DSpace relate to the steps 
involved in depositing an item
(e.g. provide content + metadata, check the metadata for accuracy or add 
more of it, check the quality
of the content, check the accuracy of the content from a 
technical/preservation perspective, maybe
do some normalization of the content, etc.) Different institutions, and 
different communities within
institutions, make very different choices about these steps and need to 
configure the system
differently to support them.

When I think about document lifecycles I'm usually thinking of the entire 
life of the document,
from creation, to deposit in DSpace, to management over time (e.g. 
preservation format
migrations), to destruction in those cases where that is necessary. So the 
DSpace workflow
is not that, and there isn't really much in DSpace now that handles 
lifecycle management as
I've just defined it -- there will be more management and preservation 
tools as time goes by,
and maybe eventually some records management tools (including destructors), 
but no one
has really had the need to implement any of that yet.

I hope that answers your question, and if you had something different in 
mind for document
lifecycles please feel free to amplify (and if you have any use cases or 
other requirements for
lifecycle events I'd love to see them).

MacKenzie

At 04:59 PM 12/6/2004 +0000, Simon Mackey wrote:
>Hi there,
>I've been having a look through the mailing list archives to see if anyone
>has come up with a customisation that would allow custom document lifecycles
>to be defined in dspace. At the moment, it seems that it's a hard-coded
>lifecycle (is this correct?) as far as I can tell. I saw on this post
>(http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?msg_id=9812758) that
>apparently "there's lots of discussion about work various people have done
>to edit the workflow and the issues they've faced", but I can't seem to find
>any. Also, are we talking about the same thing when I say 'document
>lifecycle' and others say 'workflow'?
>
>So, I just thought I'd ask the mailing list if anyone has in fact
>implemented dspace with a fully customisable document lifecycle
>module/add-on? I understand, from a dspace admin that I talked to, that
>dspace is only really meant to be a digital library and not a collaborative
>environment (which is what I'm looking for). We want our users to be able to
>collaborate on documents from start (initial ideas) to finish (final
>publication), and all the stages inbetween that are different for each
>person, hence the need for custom lifecycles. Maybe I'm in the wrong place
>for that and the dspace vision doesn't include that?
>
>I look forward to hearing from you.
>
>Many thanks,
>simon
>
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MacKenzie Smith
Associate Director for Technology
MIT Libraries
Building E25-131d
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA  02139
(617)253-8184
kenzie at mit.edu