[Dspace-general] metadata questions

[Jim Downing]

Hi Gerson,

On Mon, Feb 07, 2005 at 03:54:15PM +1030, Gerson Galang wrote:
> Jim Downing wrote:
> >On Thu, 2005-02-03 at 09:29 +1030, Gerson Galang wrote:
> >>
> >>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?
> >
> >I've written a importer that grabs XHTML files from the web, extracts
> >the dc namespaces elements and uses the metadata from them. I know Scott
> >Yeadon's written a web GUI to the bulk importer, and I'd imagine there
> >are a few more similar initiatives. Best to ask on dspace-tech (copied
> >here). 
> >
> >What exactly were you hoping to automate?
> 
> What we are planning to automate is the uploading of data files that 
> researchers here in South Australia have generated. These data files 
> might just be sitting in researchers desktop machine (or somewhere else) 
> and it would be good if they can just automate the upload of these files 
> by inputting the location of these files from the command line or the 
> web interface instead of uploading the files one by one from the web 
> browser.

I don't know of anything that does this, but it shouldn't be too
difficult to write.

> >>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?
> >
> >
> >DSpace has a Java API that can be used locally, where 'locally' in this
> >context means that you can get a direct connection to the db and access
> >to the storage filesystem (which could be achieved through NFS as far as
> >I know). Are you specifically referring to a remote API?
> 
> At the moment, we are only looking at doing all of these things locally 
> but it will help us a lot in making a decision of using dspace if there 
> are plans of providing a web interface for it. Are there any timeline on 
> when this functionality will be available for DSpace? 

It hasn't appeared on the roadmap so far. If it's useful to you, the
best course of action is to describe the functionality you want as a
feature request on the sourceforge site
(http://sourceforge.net/projects/dspace) and maybe also on the roadmap
page on the wiki (http://wiki.dspace.org/RoadMap).

I have heard of a couple of initiatives to provide WS interfaces to
DSpace, which might make the sort of functionality you're describing
easier to implement.

> Is DSpace also 
> going to have an SRW query interface in the future? If not, what query 
> interface are you planning to provide?

OCLC have built an SRW interface to DSpace: -

http://pubserv.oclc.org/srw/Installation.html

Best regards,
jim
-- 
Jim Downing			Cambridge University Computing Service
DSpace at Cambridge Programmer	New Museums Site, Pembroke St,
ojd20 at cam.ac.uk			Cambridge. CB2 3QH