Tag: repository

Fedora 2.0 now available

http://www.fedora.info/

You’ll likely see this a few times today, but the Fedora project have released version 2.0 of what they term their “general purpose repository service.” This should prove interesting – Fedora has been talked about at various times as a possible LOR solution, even though its origins are in the ‘institutional repository’ space. Tip o’ the hat to David Mattison for spotting this. Stay tuned! – SWL

Infrae ‘Railroad Repository’ for Plone or Zope

http://www.infrae.com/products/railroad

I am really not sure why I haven’t seen more of this, as the longer I look at the LOR problem the more sense it makes to me that ‘conventional’ repositories can be reasonably easily built on the back of existing (large and relatively stable) open source Content Management Systems. This comes as well with a realization that try as one might, it is likely not feasible to omit the content management of learning objects from one’s solution. This repository system, from a software development company based in the Netherlands, runs on top of Plone or Zope and appears to support OAI harvesting of Dublin Core records out of the box.

In truth there are a couple of repositories I know of that have taken the similar approach – Connexions is built on Plone, and Rob Woodbury’s Avire (though not explicitly an LOR) on top of TikiWiki. And then there is Eduplone, but to be honest I have never quite sussed that one out. – SWL

PLANET Digital Repository

http://ants.etse.urv.es/planetdr/

On the surface just another repository project, but of interest to me because it is a current project from outside of Canada that seems to have picked up the Edusource Communications Layer (ECL) developed by Marek Hatala and others as part of the Edusource project.

This is the second piece of information I’ve had in as many weeks that Edusource isn’t maybe as moribund as it’s original website would lead one to believe. I guess some of the action has moved on to this eRIB site and to this eduSource Registry of Services, but still, it seems pretty unclear to me what in fact is still going on. Would love to know, though. – SWL

University of Arizona’s DLearn – DSpace-based LOR

https://www.dlearn.arizona.edu/index.jsp

I have wondered out loud a few times whether anyone was attempting an LOR on top of DSpace. I got some lukewarm responses but nothing very concrete to back up DSpace’s own claims that it could be used as one. Today I stumbled across this – I don’t know for an absolute fact, but this sure looks like a DSpace-powered site, ostensibly serving ‘learning objects’ hedged as ‘digital learning materials.’

Given my current predicament (some of you will know of which I speak) I’m not really feeling like one to throw stones, glass houses and all that, eh. But this performs kind of how one would expect it to – straightforward support of single object binary blob uploads, searching and browsing, collection support, workflow for submission and fine and dandy archiving using MD5 checksums. And maybe in the end this is all there needs to be, though it seems like we’ve seen enough of that style of repository to convince that it has some shortcomings. Certainly, nothing by way of authorization, DRM, handling of XML content or content aggregation which seem to be where things are heading. So clearly not an endorsement, simply an example. – SWL

Firstlight.ca – commercial “royalty free/rights managed images and footage” repository

http://www.firstlight.ca/

Sent to me by a colleague as a “Canadian example of digital rights managment for digital media,” (thanks Brian!), this is worth pondering for those in the repository building business.

The site uses a lot of Javascript, frames and flash which makes it a real pain to try and point out specific aspects to you as it mostly returns under the single URL, but if you go to the pricing info page you can launch a Flash-based “Rights Managed Pricing Calculator” which is worth looking at (if only for a bit of sticker shock at how much images cost to license). The browseable taxonomy terms and how the searching works (clearly using some thesaurus) is also worth a glance.

Yeah, yeah, I know, all content should be free/it’s the networks, not the closed silos/the revolution will be blogged/yada yada yada. For the rest of us, here’s simply an actual real world commercial example to chew on. – SWL

CWSpace Poster at SPARC Institutional Repository Workshop

http://cwspace.mit.edu/docs/ProjectMgt/Reports/SPARC-IR-Workshop/sparc-poster.html

Via a post on the Dspace-LOR mailing list by William Reilly of MIT comes mention of this poster concerning various content packaging methods for LOs. The poster was produced for use at the SPARC Institutional Repository Workshop by the CWSpace project, a project investigating the use of Dspace to archive MIT’s Open CourseWare materials. The poster is an awkward size, but well worth a look as it gives a good overview of the issues and some of the alternate approaches to content packaging that are currently converging.

‘I hear that train a coming….’ – SWL

D-Lib Article – A Web Service Interface for Creating Concept Browsing Interfaces

http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november04/sumner/11sumner.html

Some of you may have run across the VUE concept mapping application before. One of its promises is that it will allow you to create concept map interfaces to Fedora-based repositories.

This recent D-Lib article describes a similar innovation, but in this case it is the introduction of a web service-based interface called “Concept Space Interchange Protocol” to support the deployment of concept browsing interfaces to digital libraries. As the paper concludes “The merit of [the] approach lies in its innovative use of web services technology to provide an educationally relevant visualization service across distributed library sites, as opposed to creating a visualization interface for a single library.”

What’s that sound you hear? Listen carefully, it’s the sound of the train leaving the station, and while the library community all quietly climbed aboard, the ed tech community was still debating the need for a train. – SWL

Open Repository – a U.K.-based DSpace implementor

http://www.openrepository.com/

As if additional proof was needed that there is legs to the value-added open source service model, another example in the field of ‘institutional repositories’ (in addition to the Fedora implementors, VTLS) is this U.K.-based company that is making a business of implementing DSpace.
In addition, the existance of not one but 2 commercialized Institutional Repository packages gives weight to the idea that the IR market is likely to become more well-formed, quicker, than the LOR market (whose budget do you think is bigger – the ed tech department’s or the library’s?) – SWL

SciX – Open, self organising repository for scientific information exchange

http://www.scix.net/

Via David Mattison came news of this ‘repository’ project from the European Union to enable open publishing of scientific literature. This is definitely more of the ‘institutional’ repository-type projects, but still lots of interesting stuff to learn from – check out the work packages they defined (who would have thunk to include “repository content” as part of the work) as well as a score of interesting papers they term their ‘deliverables.’

(P.S. Please forgive me if I end up posting a few things you’ve seen before over the next while – it’s tough catching up a month’s absence from the blogosphere). – SWL