>> Here at Notre Dame we have created an initial DSpace, DigiTool, ETD-
>> db, and MyLibrary institutional repository:...
Here at Notre Dame we have made progress regarding the implementation
of our institutional repository by combining DSpace, ETD-db,
DigiTool, and MyLibrary. For a limited time, see:
http://dewey.library.nd.edu/morgan/idr/
We have four different types of content in our repository:
1. electronic theses and dissertations
2. images
3. "excellent undergraduate research"
4. "grey" literature authored by faculty
#1 uses the ETD-db software from Virginia Tech. #2 begins its life in
a Filemaker Pro database and gets exported to DigiTool. #3 and #4
both live in DSpace. For the most part, each type of content is
described using Dublin Core and each type of content is harvested via
OAI into a centralized (MyLibrary) cache.
We have successfully written reports against the cache allowing us to
provide (SRU) searchable as well as browsable interfaces to the
content. We have been able to create searchable as well as browsable
interfaces to subsets of the cache too. We have been able to create
"widgets, gadgets, and gizmos" against the cache to provide value-
added services such as the syndication of ordered lists of content to
departmental and author pages. I have also demonstrated how pages
crawled by Google can be listed with their associated Google PageRank
integer denoting a sort of impact factor.
We have successfully drafted a release/permissions form. It
stipulates four things:
1. Yes, I am the copyright owner of
this work.
2. I grant the University to deposit
my work in the repository and freely
distribute it.
3. I retain my copyrights to the work.
4. I may pull my work from the repository
as along as I submit my request in
writing.
To date we have about 500 items in our repository. Half of them are
images. The other half are working papers from two on-campus
institutes and a tiny number of undergraduate papers. The balance are
theses and dissertations. In the near future I believe we will
include about 100 computer science technical reports and about 100
citations from the engineering faculty. We hope to include content
from the Open Course Ware (OCW) project as well.
When it comes to authority control we have not done a whole lot. To
implement a controlled vocabulary we have used our facet/term
approach to classification. We created a new DSpace/Dublin Core field
called description.ft. In it we place our facet/term combinations,
and they look something like this:
\\Subjects\\Latin America
\\Subjects\\International Studies
\\Flags\\Undergraduate Research
\\Regions\\Mexico
\\Regions\\Venezuela
When we harvest this data we take note of the incoming data's shape (\
\facet\\term). This way we know it is a facet/term combination. We
then update our cache accordingly. We need to implement these
"shapes" because Dublin Core data harvested from DSpace is
unqualified; everything comes out as flat title, creator,
description, etc.
Just today we articulated a way to exploit our facet/term approach to
implement an authority list. We will create a new facet called Bio.
We will then create terms using University members' campus ID's as
terms. (Mine is emorgan.) These terms will then be associated in our
MyLibrary database with these (Dublin Core) fields:
* title will hold the name of a person
* description will hold the person's bio
In our DSpace implementation we then enter appropriate facet/term
combinations into bibliographic records so we will add things like \
\Bio\\emorgan to records as well as the facet/term combinations
above. While harvesting we will "join" bibliographic records with
biographic records to display biographies along side working papers.
In the future we may hack the DSpace data-entry interface to allow
the selection of these Bio facets via a pull-down menu.
That is what we have done to date. We are progressing. I'm sure there
is something I've left out, but... FYI.
--
Eric Lease Morgan and Team IDR
University Libraries of Notre Dame