IUScholarWorks Technical Overview Randall Floyd Digital Library Program Programmer/Database Administrator

Questions: What is DSpace? Why DSpace? What technology does DSpace use? How does DSpace use metadata?

Other Interesting Things Customizations Challenges

Terminology DSpace, IUScholarWorks, Institutional Repository, Open Access …

Terminology DSpace, IUScholarWorks, Institutional Repository, Open Access … IUScholarWorks

Terminology DSpace, IUScholarWorks, Institutional Repository, Open Access … IUScholarWorks is an Open Access

Terminology DSpace, IUScholarWorks, Institutional Repository, Open Access … IUScholarWorks is an Open Access Institutional Repository

Terminology DSpace, IUScholarWorks, Institutional Repository, Open Access … IUScholarWorks is an Open Access Institutional Repository built on DSpace

What is DSpace? According to DSpace marketing: “DSpace is a groundbreaking digital library system to capture, store, index, preserve, and redistribute all your scholarly research material in digital formats.”

What is DSpace? DSpace is freely available open source software jointly developed by MIT Libraries and Hewlett-Packard Labs as a solution for creating various kinds of digital repositories

Why DSpace? Other competing solutions: EPrints, ProQuest's Digital Performed full evaluation of solutions Important Criteria –Features –Ownership/support: local vs. service provider –Technology –Cost is always a factor

Why DSpace? Choice also influenced by current DLP infrastructure initiatives Hard choice since DSpace was just emerging and "rough around the edges" Eventually you have to get started -- sometimes you just have to choose something, even if it isn't perfect

That's our story and we're stuck with it -- Stanley Laurel

What technology does DSpace use? It is a Java web application –Java servlets in an application server –Java Server Pages render the interfaces –Look and feel from Cascading Style Sheets Metadata is stored in a relational database –PostgreSQL by default, Oracle also supported

What technology does DSpace use? The document objects are stored as "bitstreams" on disk Persistent identifiers to items are provided by CNRI Handle system – Searchable indexes –Apache Lucene text search engine –indexes both metadata and document text

How does DSpace use metadata? Based on Dublin Core Submitters fill out forms with fields representing Dublin Core elements Fully customizable through the Dublin Core Registry Searchable via basic and advanced search controls

How does DSpace use metadata? Dublin Core Metadata available via OAI- PMH server –Open Archives Initiative – Protocol for Metadata Harvesting Can be indexed and searched by Google –in normal fashion by crawling communities and browse pages –via Google Scholar and OAI-PMH server

Other Interesting Things Customizations Challenges

Customizations Interface and Branding –Top and side "news" bars maintained through the administrative interface –Labels and textual elements are customizable via a single file –Minor style sheet changes to affect overall appearance Submission Process –Form labels and target elements configurable via XML configuration file

Customizations IU CAS Authentication –No need to maintain separate user accounts and passwords –Transparently adds IU user to DSpace when accessing for the first time

Researcher Pages Is a DSpace add-on developed by University of Rochester UR discovered that communities wanted IR to be more people-centric –DSpace is content-centric Creates "cookie-cutter" mini web pages about authors Authors can link to both internal DSpace items and external URLs Example Researcher Page at University of Rochester

Challenges Customizations difficult to merge into base code when upgrading Convergence with DLP infrastructure project Metadata issues –Need to get it as right as possible the first time –Diverse content makes metadata planning hard –A "one size fits all" approach may not describe any one type of content very robustly –Must be reusable when/if moved to a different system

Discussion

Resources IUScholarWorks – DSpace – Scholarly Communication – –