[Dspace-general] Ability to replace existing items

[William Reilly]

On Jan 24, 2005, at 2:12 PM, Petsche, Kevin F wrote:
> Hi,
> I was just reading through Beatrix’s post and MacKenzie’s reply about 
> replacing an already submitted item (and thus maintaining its 
> handle).  Am I to conclude that the only way to do this, then, is 
> through the import process? 
>
> This is a significant need, I believe, if DSpace is to become a 
> functioning repository for reusable learning objects RLO’s).  We’re 
> getting ready to engage a few communities here about this, but it 
> seems that these RLO’s are too dynamic (i.e. they’re constantly being 
> updated by their creators) to expect communities to go through the 
> full submission process each time they make an update.   
>

Hello Kevin,

I would be very interested to follow up with you to learn more about 
the nature of your RLOs and expected usage patterns.

[I'm taking the liberty of cross-addressing this response to the DSpace 
LOR (Learning Object Repository) listserv dspace-lor.]

I wanted to let you know here at MIT we are at work on a project called 
CWSpace to archive MIT's OpenCourseWare in DSpace, and are quite 
interested in ingesting and managing LOs (and entire course websites) 
as DSpace Items.  We've devised a profile for the use of the IMS 
Content Package for this purpose, and we hope to extend it to usefully 
accommodate the course and LO packaging needs of our other MIT LMSs 
(Stellar and SloanSpace), as well as eventually Sakai.

The new import functionality is just beginning to get designed then 
coded.  It will need to handle IMS-CP, with (we hope) a successful 
transform (XSLT) to a METS package; an importer module for one or both 
of those package formats is the work ahead.  Exporters for each are 
also slated.

In any event, my first take on reading your post strikes me that what 
we have in mind are LOs that might be considered more "final" and 
"published" than what it sounds like your communities are talking 
about.  It would be interesting to hear just how your communities 
envision using this kind of digital repository for works that remain, 
to some degree, "in progress..." :^)   Are they currently using 
anything more along the lines of content managment systems (more 
attuned to workflow, versioning, etc.)?
-- This isn't to say that we on our end won't also face "interesting" 
problems concerning what to do with variants and new versions of LOs, 
and of entire, re-used courses for that matter.   All in the work 
ahead.

> Also, where is there documentation about the import process? 

http://dspace.org/technology/system-docs/application.html#itemimporter

> Kevin Petsche
>

Best,

William Reilly
Technical Analyst
MIT Libraries' Digital Library Research Group
Project Manager, CWSpace
http://cwspace.mit.edu
wreilly at mit.edu
617 253 5716