[Dspace-general] Questions Regarding Structure of DSpace

[Petsche, Kevin F]

Good day!

 

Our implementation of DSpace is currently in beta testing here at IUPUI
(http://dspace.iupui.edu <http://dspace.iupui.edu/> ) and we are getting
a great response from some areas of the campus interested in placing
material in the repository.  

 

But I am concerned that I am not setting-up some of these communities
and collections in the best manner.  

 

Let me explain:

 

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.  

 

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.  

 

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.  

 

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.  

 

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.  

 

Thanks so much in advance!  

 

Kevin

 

Kevin Petsche

Assistant Librarian

Electronic Journals Collection Manager

Digital Libraries/Cataloging Teams

IUPUI University Library UL1115D

755 West Michigan Street

Indianapolis, Indiana  46202

317.278.2330

317.278.0368 (fax)

 

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