[Dspace-general] AONS Pilot Service Launched

[Scott Yeadon]

For the information of list members.

AONS Pilot Service Launched
===================
A beta version of the Automatic Obsolescence Notification Service (AONS) 
has been launched as a pilot service. The service provides support to 
repositories anywhere around Australia (or in fact globally) for 
managing format obsolescence of digital materials.
 
Users can register with the service by providing a URL to a repository's 
format scan summary. The AONS service will display the summary and allow 
a repository manager to compare the formats of items in their repository 
with information from format registries such as PRONOM and Library of 
Congress. These registries flag any formats that are likely to become 
obsolete. Repository managers can then make curation decisions about any 
items at risk, such as upgrading their formats.
 
By downloading and installing an AONS locally, an institution can also 
take advantage of a pilot risk metrics implementation. This feature 
requires manual data entry in order to assign weightings to particular 
formats to create a risk profile for each format. Over time, by sharing 
this information between AONS instances it may be possible to build up 
accurate risk profiles for many common formats.
 
The AONS software is the result of the AONS II project funded under APSR 
and developed by David Pearson, David Levy and Matthew Walker from the 
National Library of Australia (NLA) with an administrative user 
interface developed by David Berriman at ANU.

The software is able to be downloaded from Sourceforge at 
_http://sourceforge.net/projects/aons_ and a mailing list is also 
available for support and feedback. As this is a beta release we welcome 
feedback to the Sourceforge mailing list to inform our testing which 
will continue until mid-September.

Please try out the pilot service by sending an email to 
_cosi at apsr.edu.au_ <mailto:cosi at apsr.edu.au> to register with the 
service, and tell us which institution you are from.  Any quieries can 
also be sent to this address.

Further information about the AONS Project can be seen at 
_http://www.apsr.edu.au/aons2/_