New Ideas : JISC Repositories

Repositories and RSS

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 00:00:00 PDT

Repositories have a function as a source of the latest R&D knowledge, which should be exposed rather than kept hidden from users. Their content should be made available to wider audiences using current awareness tools such as RSS feeds. RSS also could help to increase the interest of authors as well, in order to boost the deposit rate.

Tags : rss

Comments (0)Posted By : r.a.macleod on 08/25/2008 under Miscellaneous

We should manage, not embrace, inconsistency

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:00:00 PDT

Vote On Idea

Inconsistency is a fact of life, and any repository instance or system that wants to avoid bottlenecks is going to have to accept items that have inconsistent metadata (and possibly inconsistent formats and policies, though consistency in those areas may be easier or more important to enforce).

That doesn't mean you have to settle for it, though. It's possible to take a progressive approach, where messy metadata comes in, and is then brought into consistency (by humans or machines) with particular standards. Moreover, certain metadata formats (such as MODS) have ways of marking metadata that's informal first-cut versus metadata that's been brought into conformance with a standard, allowing people or programs to go through repositories and catalogs and find and prioritize items to be brought into conformance.

I did something like this with my online books collection, where I started with non-authority-controlled names and no subject terms, and over time brought more names under LC authority controlled, and also over time went from no subjects to automatic subject assignment with somewhat out of date authorities to reviewed subject assignment with current authorities.

The process isn't completely finished (though it's largely done by now), but it doesn't have to be complete to be useful. The metadata includes (implicitly or explicitly) indicators of the quality of name and subject metadata therein, and I can prioritize what to update based on usage and the influx of new and related material.

Tags : metadata

Comments (0)Posted By : ockerblo on 08/21/2008 under Consistency

Service creators will be looking for human-readable specifications

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:00:00 PDT

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People who might create services from repository-based information
will be looking for simple human-readable information on the policies,
formats and metadata used by repositories. This is as important as
creating machine-readable interfaces.

Tags : human readable machine readable repository services

Comments (0)Posted By : nf on 08/16/2008 under Consistency

Minimal metadata for sharing?

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:00:00 PDT

-11

Vote On Idea

For all practical purposes, the ability to express metadata as the
Dublin Core metadata elements is a sufficient baseline for sharing
repository items across subject and institutional domains.

Tags : metadata dublin core sharing

Comments (1)Posted By : nf on 08/16/2008 under Consistency

Broad principles not tight prescriptions

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:00:00 PDT

Vote On Idea

The changes in technology, the diversity of cataloguing practice,
the diversity of ownership and legal considerations and the
possibilities for metadata to be created remotely all mean that
acceptable and achievable recommendations for consistency between
repositories are likely to be broad principles with examples of good
practice rather than prescriptive rules or precise recommendations.

Tags : recommendations schema policies metadata

Comments (2)Posted By : nf on 08/16/2008 under Consistency

Metadata will increasingly be created remotely at the point of need

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:00:00 PDT

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Far from becoming irrelevant, metadata for repository items will
become more important but it will increasingly be created and assigned
remotely. This will be by automated procedures such as indexing and
text analysis and also by users and readers, through the use of
tagging mechanisms. These developments will have implications for
consistency between repositories and between items.

Tags : metadata tagging auto classification indexing

Comments (1)Posted By : nf on 08/16/2008 under Consistency

Lets think outside the box....

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:00:00 PDT

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This is focused on the researcher world, but the arguments hold for other fields

Q: What is the primary factor for ranking researchers?
A: Citations.
Surely the aim, therefor, of the researcher is to market her work as widely as possible, to maximise the potential for citation.
Given that we are now in the Information Age, where The Internet is the primary source of answers (backed up by reading what has been found, on paper), then the sensible solution is to place enough of the research results on the Internet such that they can be found and assesed, and followed up.
Where, in the Internet, this material is placed is almost moot: the Internet has no location per sae - Search Engine index everything, everywhere.

Q: What is the primary factor for ranking Institutions?
A: The amount of research performed by researchers of standing (see above)
Surely the aim, therefor, of the Institution is to market the work of their researchers, with sufficient "corporate identity" attached, as widely as possible, to maximise the readership of that work.

THEREFORE
I think we can say that researchers need publicity, and Institutions want to be the ones to do it.

The question I see is:
"How can we make it easist for the researcher to publicise their work, and how can we help the Institution capitalise on that individual publicity?"

"Institutional Repositories" are the current solution - are they the right one?

Comments (2)Posted By : ian.stuart on 08/15/2008 under Miscellaneous

The Repository is about re-engineering institutional business processes

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 00:00:00 PDT

-1

Vote On Idea

The concept of the repository is difficult to distinguish from other kinds of institutional services which might be offered (digital archiving for example), unless the original context of the idea is considered, which was (and is) the scholarly communications crisis.

Within the context of the scholarly communications crisis, the original purpose of repositories was to provide a way in which universities could enable access to research which they could no longer afford to buy because of the rising costs of journals. The repository was therefore a tool to aid the re-engineering of the business process of the library (as we came to think), or even the business processes of the entire university (as we now
tend to think).

My own view is that if the repository isn't serving that function, it isn't
a very useful concept.

Tags : repository definition re-engineering business process scholarly communication crisis

Comments (0)Posted By : philip.hunter on 08/15/2008 under Repository functions

Recognise the differences in services for preservation and services for sharing

Wed, 06 Aug 2008 00:00:00 PDT

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The umbrella term "repository" conflates two very different kinds of services - services whose primary purpose is to preserve a type of media, and services whose primary purpose is to enable media to be shared and used by people. They don't look the same, they have different kinds of users and roles, they don't share the same concerns, and you use different language to talk about their features. Maybe we would get further by having an amicable divorce, and only get together to talk about things that are completely generic, like storage.

Comments (3)Posted By : scott.bradley.wilson on 08/06/2008 under Putting user at centre of definition

Repository should aspire to make contents accessible and usable over the medium term

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:00:00 PDT

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A repository should be for content which is required and expected to be useful over a significant period. It may host more transient content, but by and large the point of a repository is persistence. While suggesting a repository should be a "full OAIS" has not proved acceptable to this group so far, investment in a repository and this need for persistence suggest that repository managers should aim to make their content both accessible and usable over the medium (rather than short) term. For the purposes of this exercise, let's suggest factors of around 3: short term 3 years, medium term around 10 years, long term around 30 years plus. Ten years is a reasonable period to aspire to; it justifies investment, but is unlikely to cover too many major content migrations.

To achieve this, I think repository management should assess their repository and its policies. Using OAIS at a high level as a yard stick would be appropriate. Full compliance would not be required, but thought to each major concept and element would be good practice.

This "idea" is to replace the "full OAIS" approach with something more realistic and achievable.

Comments (0)Posted By : c.rusbridge on 07/22/2008 under Broadening definition