[Dspace-general] Week 4: Bitstream types (Dorothea Salo)

[Tom De Mulder]

On Tue, 9 Sep 2008, Mark H. Wood wrote:

>>> I fully agree with Mark's suggestion. A/V as well as Medical Imaging is not
>>> something you would like to deal with as a generic repository service.
>> Assuredly true. That doesn't mean I don't have to.
> But you *don't* have to.  Somebody already invented RealPlayer.

As far as I know, noone invented a long-term storage solution for general 
digital content, including images, audio, video and scientific and medical 
data. This generic data often ties together closely to papers also 
deposited in a repository. As such it makes sense to store it all 
together.

We have quite a lot of all types of content, and have already had to bash 
the DSpace software hard (the thumbnails in particular were implemented in 
an atrociously inefficient way) to make it work. But we need it to work, 
because a large part of our remit is digital preservation.

> sorters, etc.  As somebody invented DSpace.  What we need is to bolt
> them all to a well-designed panel and invent the wiring that connects
> them.  The panel becomes The Machine, and all the various sub-machines
> disappear behind it, although they still exist as discrete components
> that can be replaced individually as needed.

I can only assume that you haven't tried to bolt much into DSpace.

--
Tom De Mulder <tdm27 at cam.ac.uk> - Cambridge University Computing Service
+44 1223 3 31843 - New Museums Site, Pembroke Street, Cambridge CB2 3QH
-> 09/09/2008 : The Moon is Waxing Gibbous (53% of Full)