[Dspace-general] Re: Question from IEEE Spectrum article

[MacKenzie Smith]

Hi Peter,

That particular scenario in the article was highly speculative... i.e. for 
the day when such a procedure might really be needed to perform a format 
migration.

I based the scenario on some planning that we did here at MIT awhile back 
on how we would want to handle multiple versions, either because an author 
deposited a new version or because a curator created one for preservation 
purposes. We would add the new version as a new bitstream on the existing 
DSpace item record, then change the UI to make it clear which version is 
preferred. This wouldn't be hard to do, but there are no tools in DSpace 
right now that do exactly this procedure.

MacKenzie

At 01:53 PM 7/25/2005 -0500, Peter Urban wrote:
>In the July 2005, IEEE Spectrum article, MacKenzie states the
>following...
>
>"...The curator then runs a query in DSpace to find all the PDF files in
>the archive, acquires or creates a program to automatically convert PDFs
>into PDGs, and runs the conversion." ... "Both PDF and PDG versions are
>then stored in the archive in case someone questions the conversion and
>wants to see the original PDF bits. The PDG version is now the version
>that appears first in the DSpace Web interface for access purposes, and
>the researchers looking at the article never need to know that the
>article has been converted from one format to another-it looks exactly
>as it used to, thanks to DSpace and its curators."
>
>Can you explain how/where both versions are stored in the archive? Are
>the new PDG files added as new bitstreams to the same items? How does
>the PDG version appear first in the DSpace Web interface?
>
>P.S. Good article!
>
>
>Peter Urban
>Kristine Fallon Associates, Inc.
>Digital Archive for Architecture System
>The Art Institute of Chicago
>purban at kfa-inc.com

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