[Dspace-general] DSpace: "digital" archive or "literature" archive?

[Richard MAHONEY]

Hello Derek,

On Fri, 2007-06-01 at 21:38, Derek Hohls wrote:
> Richard
>  
> Thanks for sharing those ideas and thoughts.  

>  I looked at the Nuxeo site, and also read through the technical
>  comparison by Richard Wyles - very interesting.  I also looked the
>  Fedora case study implementation by Richard Green 

>  In summary, I have gathered that:  

> * DSpace is less technically capable, does not scale as well, does not
> handle complex objects or variety of objects, or mass-uploading of
>  data, but has an easy and simple front-end for users and
>  administrators. There is also a wealth of start-up material and a good
>  community.

>  * Fedora is more technically capable, scales well (within our likely
>  limits at least), seems to handle complex objects with a variety of
>  data types - MIME- based.  There is no front-end that works on the
>  web; and the Java interface that is supplied looks absolutely
>  barebones at best.  The concepts and ideas of Fedora also seem quite
>  complex and are not clearly explained in the starting documentation. 
>  User docs and tutorials seem minimal.  Community support is unknown.

>  Richard Green's case  study says: "Fedora 'out of the box' was a
>  software tool with an associated very steep learning curve and a user
>  had to rely heavily on documentation available on the Fedora
>  website... we came to realise that the documentation appeared to lack
> some crucial elements and that, for a first time user, it was sometimes
>  not easy to follow."


> This leaves us in a difficult position between two choices; 

> (a) to hold off and hope for Fedora to significantly improve the front
> end and user documentation... which might be  problematic as its not
>   clear how there funding will continue after September  this year
>  (2007), and there is no project roadmap, so its not that clear as to
>  what they will actually focus on.

> (b) to go on with DSpace, and acknowledge that its a temporary solution
> which may not adequately address many of our use cases (although still
> a step up from holding all research data on local drives or on a DMS).
> if we later decide to switch to Fedora, I hope it would be possible to
> extract the content out for the new system.  DSpace says:

>  http://wiki.dspace.org/index.php//EndUserFaq#Can_I_export_my_digital_material_out_of_DSpace.3F
> 
> this is possible....

Another option -- which I forgot to mention -- may be MyCoRe, at least
once the interface and documentation are available in English
(anticipated):

About MyCoRe:

http://www.mycore.de/content/main/information.xml

Features:

http://www.mycore.de/content/main/information/description.xml

Applications (Deployments):

http://www.mycore.de/content/main/anwendungen.xml

MyCoRe Documentation:

http://www.mycore.de/content/main/documentation.xml


Note the commitment to support enterprise grade databases, support for
audio and video streaming, and an Z39.50 interface.


Best regards,

 Richard Mahoney


-- 
Richard MAHONEY | internet: http://indica-et-buddhica.org/
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OXFORD, NZ      | email: r.mahoney at indica-et-buddhica.org
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