[Dspace-general] Summary: Week 1 responses

[Dorothea Salo]

(The chat summary is up on the wiki at
<http://wiki.dspace.org/index.php/Community_Requirements_Gathering_Chat_20_August_2008>;
participants, feel free to edit! This summary will go up on the wiki
also, and will likewise be editable.)

I received six off-list responses, alongside three onlist ones
(including my own).

LIKES

- Simple to get running, a lot of bang for the buck (3 mentions)
- Checksum checker (3 mentions)
- HTML display engine (3 mentions)
- Search engine: "simple and fast" (2 mentions)
- Manakin theming (2 mentions)
- Legible displays, easy structuring of data and depositors into
communities/collections
- Flexible Dublin Core, easy defining and rebuilding of indexes
- Storage in SQL database
- Easy to showcase and share data
- Community spirit and visionary dedication!
- Configurable submission workflow, metadata templating
- Maven dealing with Java dependencies

NEEDS/ISSUES

- Complexity of authorization/permissions system, poor fit with
real-world workflows, too much work for DSpace admins that can't be
delegated (5 mentions)
- Communities/collections model confusing and unintuitive for
end-users (3 mentions)
- Submission process needs streamlining and simplification;
input-forms.xml needs to be end-user editable (3 mentions)
- Allow bitstream updating/addition after deposit by users and
collection administrators (me, George)
- Doesn't automatically feed people into user groups based on LDAP
group membership
- Allow depositors to withdraw their own items
- Difficult to customize; also, moving to Manakin costs functionality
- Documentation scattered and confusing
- Can only use Postgres and Oracle databases
- Too-close integration with handles

DESIRED NEW FUNCTIONALITY

I tried to exclude this from the question, but I got a lot of it anyway!

- better i18n (community/collection descriptions, metadata-input
forms) (3 mentions)
- statistics (per item, per author) (3 mentions)
- batch import of citation-only references from a single document
- web UI to prompt a reindexing
- add "also by" (author) or "see also" (subject) links to item pages
- persistent bitstream handles/URLs
- HTML in metadata (e.g. abstracts)
- embargo support
- bulk metadata editing through a web UI


The floor is open for discussion! Devs, please feel free to ask for
clarification, which I hope participants will provide. Participants,
if I have traduced your input, please do say so.

Dorothea

-- 
Dorothea Salo dsalo at library.wisc.edu
Digital Repository Librarian AIM: mindsatuw
University of Wisconsin
Rm 218, Memorial Library
(608) 262-5493