[Dspace-general] metadata questions

[MacKenzie Smith]

Hi Gerson,

These are very complex questions so these answers might not be what you 
were really looking for, but here's my take on them:

>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?

Yes, via batch load as you heard from Scott Yeadon.

>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?

You can extend the qDC elements as needed, and there is a patch for 
customized submission screens which allow you to do this that is queued for 
release pretty soon (after the next 1.2.x release).

>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?

The long answer is SIMILE: http://simile.mit.edu/ which would provide tools 
for dealing with arbitrary metadata via the RDF and semantic web technologies.
We are also working with colleagues at Cambridge University to develop a 
set of Web Services to DSpace that will provide basic search, deposit and 
retrieval functionality, although not with arbitrary metadata support (in 
fact, they will only support qDC expressed as IMS LOM metadata initially). 
Long-terms plans in DSpace 2.0 go much further in that direction, but that 
looks to be a long way off at the moment, given the resources available for 
that work.

Best,

MacKenzie



MacKenzie Smith
Associate Director for Technology
MIT Libraries
Building E25-131d
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA  02139
(617)253-8184
kenzie at mit.edu