[Dspace-general] DSpace Archiving

[Peter Walgemoed]

Scott,

I recognize your concern and think a lot of it has to do with your institution's policy and who is responsible for providing which service. If the policy is that DSpace is used as a repository for archiving/long term preservation, the policy will likely be that everything that is entered into DSpace can not be deleted/modified. E.g. it is archived and can only be deleted by authorized persons, because of retention times and/or specific (user) requests.
In case of Dr. Smith, if he is still working on his document (e.g.. part of the creation process and not yet ready for archiving) he can not blame DSpace/the library when something goes wrong in this part of the process. Of course there can and should be another safety-net provided by the IT department to keep content/files that are under construction available for their users in case a local PC fails or a user makes a mistake. This should be taking care of by the (normal) IT services provided to university users. It will be part of their (server) back-up services, when Dr. Smith works on a IT supported network drive.

Hope this helps a bit in your discussion. In any case try to include your local IT department in these discussions and make them feel responsible as well.

Regards,

Peter

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Scott P. Muir 
  To: dspace-general at mit.edu 
  Sent: Wednesday, January 04, 2006 10:40 PM
  Subject: [Dspace-general] DSpace Archiving


  I am envisioning the following situation


  In May Dr. Smith enters a document into the DSpace repository.  Over 
  the next few days through a series of edits, Dr. Smith accidentally 
  deletes the document out of DSpace, but isn't aware of the 
  mishap.  Dr. Smith then leaves for the summer.  In September, Dr. 
  Smith comes back, tries to look at the document and discovers it is 
  not there.  Dr. Smith then calls the library demanding to know what 
  happened, and informing the library that the missing document was the 
  only copy.  Another scenario could have a document become corrupted 
  through some bad editing, e.g. poor use of find/replace.


  We are exploring this on two tracks:  1- not letting anyone, but a 
  very few defined number of people, delete or replace documents once 
  they are in the repository or 2) developing a comprehensive long term 
  strategy for retention of backups of the documents, etc, in DSpace so 
  that we could restore a document.

  Has anyone else discussed this and come up with what you feel is an 
  appropriate solution?

  Thanks for the input.

  Scott P Muir
  Associate University Librarian
  Bruce T. Halle Library, Room 200F
  Eastern Michigan University
  955 West Circle Drive
  Ypsilanti, MI  48197-2207

  734.487.0020 x2222 (voice)
  734.484.1151 (fax)
  http://www.emich.edu/halle/

  mailto:scott.muir at emich.edu 

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