[Dspace-general] Week 3: Good Repository Software

[Dan Scott]

2008/9/2 Dorothea Salo <dsalo at library.wisc.edu>:
> BLUNTNESS ALERT. This is not a happy email. I have tried to make it a
> reasonably diplomatic one, but I may well have failed, in which case I
> apologize in advance.

<snip>

> Repository managers: If any of this rings a bell with you, I need you
> to stand up and say so publicly. "The lurkers support me in email"
> (see <http://www.collectableboard.com/forums/books/44988-hoppys-poisoned-sanctimony.html>)
> is no more going to get these problems solved in future than it has in
> the past.

Ding ding ding. I cheated and just read your response.

I could definitely get behind your vision for repository software.

I'll apologize up front if I'm behind the times - I've been trying to
avoid doing anything with DSpace since managing to get a 1.4.2 +
various i18n patch version up and running last year.

I would add "thorough internationalization support" to the list. The
interfaces are translatable but the metadata needs to be translatable
and equally searchable too. Our collection and community names are a
prime example; we're a bilingual university, yet the lack of support
for collection and community names in multiple languages forced us (in
1.4.2) to choose to use either "English / French" or "French /
English" for the names - and either choice has both usability and
political ramifications.

Is there support yet for ordering bitstreams for a given item in
user-dictated fashion? One of our first enthusiastic adopters
published a full book in our 1.4.2-based repository, but the base hack
that we used to get his chapters to appear in the desired order was to
name the chapters A.pdf, B.pdf, C.pdf... sigh.

-- 
Dan Scott
Laurentian University