[Dspace-general] Re: metadata questions

[Scott Yeadon]

Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2005 09:29:44 +1030
From: Gerson Galang <gerson.sapac at gawab.com>
To: dspace-general at mit.edu
Subject: [Dspace-general] metadata questions
Message-ID: <42015B60.7010107 at gawab.com>
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Hi,

Does DSpace provide a functionality of automatically uploading files 
into its repository? If it does not, has anybody on this list already 
written an application which integrates with DSpace and implement this 
functionality?

>> You can download the Cocoon-based import GUI we're using at http://sts.anu.edu.au/drs/downloads/index.php. Note that it's really only suitable for simple collections (e.g. images, documents) but we'll be extending it further as we deal with more complex collections.

I've also noticed that DSpace only uses the Dublin Core metadata schema 
and doesn't give you an option to use your own schema. A work around for 
this might be to extend the default Dublin Core schema by inputting 
extra attributes that a collection or a file might need, but this still 
has to be done manually. Is there a way to automate this process so that 
users won't have to manually annotate files in the collection anymore?

>> There is no reason you couldn't make changes to do this as part of the import. We haven't added this feature because we're currently working with new communities to help with their metadata mapping, this way we avoid a lot of adding a lot of redundant metadata fields.

Are there any plans for DSpace to support other metadata schemas? Has 
anybody written a Java API for DSpace which we can use if ever we decide 
to write an application which will communicate with the server?

>> There is already an API, you can build the javadocs from the DSpace source using ant.

Gerson