[Dspace-general] Introduction

[Mark Diggory]

Hello DSpace Community,

As you have just heard from MacKenzie Smith, I have joined the MIT  
Library to fill the role of DSpace Systems Manager and Lead Developer  
for DSpace at MIT. The nature of this email is to introduce myself to  
the community and give you an opportunity to learn about my background.

For the last 6 years I've worked as a senior software developer on  
the Virtual Data Center project at the Harvard MIT Data Center (Now a  
part of the Institute for Quantitative Social Science). In this role  
I worked with directors, software developers and system  
administrators of HMDC to architect and develop the Virtual Data  
Center, a turn-key web application not too dissimilar to DSpace in  
concept and technology, and yet significantly different in design,  
architecture and subject domain.

The VDC is a Social Science digital library solution providing  
subsetting and statistical analysis capabilities on datasets. It is a  
technologically heterogeneous web application based on the following  
tools (Apache Tomcat, Struts, PostGresql, Cheshire, the R statistical  
engine, Perl, Apache HTTPD, OpenLDAP, CNRI Handle Services and OAI  
Client/Gateways). While there is significant overlap in base  
technology, the design of the VDC is quite different to that of  
DSpace. One of my current interests outside of my work at MIT is a  
comparison of these digital library implementations to seek out  
avenues for collaboration and interoperability, specifically in the  
area of storage and sharing of statistical datasets in DSpace. The  
core metadata standard used by the VDC is the (Data Documentation  
Initiative) In this regard I continue be involved as a member of the  
DDI Alliance and seek to work with this standards group to mature the  
DDI standard to be a useful addition to other metadata standards such  
as METS, Dublin Core and RDF.

My first priority at MIT will be on the DSpace at MIT experience;  
working with production staff, researchers and librarians to tailor  
DSpace to meet their needs. Followed close behind this, I will be  
contributing to DSpace as an active community member; becoming  
involved with administrative, technical and development issues around  
DSpace. I have strong interests in seeing the DSpace Federation  
become scalable and self sustaining and view myself as an advocate in  
support of the formation of an institutionally neutral DSpace  
Federation.

I look forward to becoming more familiar with all the developers and  
contributors within the DSpace community. Please feel free to drop me  
an email anytime.

Cheers,
Mark


Mark Robert Diggory
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DSpace Systems Manager
Digital Library Research Group / Systems and Technology Services
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
web: http://www.mit.edu/people/mdiggory
email: mdiggory at mit.edu
office: (617)253-1096




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