[Dspace-general] [Dspace-tech] Chat summary: 20 August 2008

[Mark Diggory]

The timing of this meeting was a bit off in my time zone, 0700 am  
(and is why I usefully prefer to use email for communication within  
the community as it is asynchronous).  Is there a transparent log of  
the chat conversation, I've logged into Meebo, but only found a  
portion of the history there...

Its pleasant to see a round table get together and talk about such  
issues, I hope it will fuel an activity to get a better needs  
assessment out of the IR Manager user group.  I would highly  
recommend formalizing the history of the event by summarizing this in  
the WIKI (as you point out a need to do when such events occur in  
chats and email lists). I also recommend someone should act as a  
moderator/secretary right now to aggregate your further list  
discussion into a more formal state in the WIKI in as real a time as  
possible.  It would be best to have the notes and chat log that  
you've presented here into a section of the WIKI focused wholly on  
the interests of the IR Managers group that is forming here.  This  
could even simply be links to the pertinent threads of interest in  
the S.F. and dspace-general email lists.

Cheers,
Mark

On Aug 20, 2008, at 8:49 AM, Dorothea Salo wrote:

> We had about twenty people (and, unfortunately, two or three trolls)
> in this morning's chat! That's a much larger turnout than I expected,
> and I find it very encouraging.
>
> After a round of introductions, we talked about the following things:
>
> BULK METADATA EDITING
> Use cases included name and subject authority control, adding a new
> piece of metadata to all the items in a collection at once.
> One manager wanted to allow student assistants to bulk-edit metadata.
> Suggestion: export/import of a collection's metadata only, for  
> batch editing
>
> PERMISSIONS
> One manager said that permissions were opaquely-named and difficult to
> understand, making it hard to determine exactly what permissions a
> given eperson has.
> Desiderata included letting epeople other than administrators create
> collections, automatically changing edit permissions on existing items
> in a collection when a new collection administrator is added, and
> letting collection administrators edit/change bitstreams (use case:
> ETDs with last-minute corrections).
> Suggestion: instead of recording permissions on each individual item,
> check against collection administrator list for edit rights on the
> item.
>
> DOCUMENTATION
> Several people mentioned using the wiki, especially the how-to pages.
> It was noted that the how-to pages are becoming disorganized and
> unwieldy, which will only get worse as more are added.
> Suggestions: organize the how-to pages by version of DSpace to which
> they apply; organize the how-to pages by task ("Install" "Customize"
> "Administer" "Troubleshoot" "Internationalize" etc).
> The mailing lists are helpful, but good information becomes the
> "needle in the haystack" -- hard to search for, especially with the
> unfriendly SourceForge interface. Several managers archive useful
> messages for later use.
> Suggestions: Build a way to auto-forward useful messages from
> dspace-tech to the wiki, for editing by one or more community members.
> Reuse material from an upcoming course on administering DSpace.
> Develop a "new user guide." Reorganize the DSpace feature list by
> common perceived needs rather than by feature.
> Dealing with problems in the underlying technology stack rather than
> DSpace itself can be difficult, as can finding live help.
> Suggestions: advertize the DSpace IRC room, arrange "office hours"  
> there.
>
> OTHER DESIDERATA
> - embargoes (two managers reported using an embargo hack; one is
> delaying an upgrade to 1.5 because it does not have one)
> - multilingual issues: community/collection descriptions in more than
> one language, metadata input in more than one language
>
> LOGISTICS
> The IRC chatroom (irc.freenode.net, #dspace) is an underused resource!
> Developers and admins watch the room who are happy to help with DSpace
> issues. To broaden awareness of this helpful space, chats will be held
> there going forward. Next week's agenda should include discussion of
> DSpace statistics.
>
> Thanks to all participants!
>
> Dorothea
>
> -- 
> Dorothea Salo dsalo at library.wisc.edu
> Digital Repository Librarian AIM: mindsatuw
> University of Wisconsin
> Rm 218, Memorial Library
> (608) 262-5493
>
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