DSpace: State of the art

www.atmire.com

DSpace User Group - Addis Ababa - Ethiopia

DSpace State of the art

OVERVIEW

1. What DSpace is and is not

2. Where do we come from?

3. Where are we going?

QUICK INTRODUCTIONMEET THE STAKEHOLDERS

Researcher

Institution

Admin staff

End User

Other institutions

1. RESEARCHER: LOOKING FOR VISIBILITY ON HIS/ HER RESEARCH

Researcher

Institution

Admin staff

End User

Other institutions

I want other people to discover my research, but my own website is not really

driving traffic...

2. INSTITUTIONS: LOOKING FOR AN EASY MEANS TO PUBLISH SCIENTIFIC OUTPUT

Researcher

Institution

Admin staff

End User

Other institutions

We want to showcase our scientific output...

...and we need a structured approach to report our research statistics to our

sponsors

3. ADMIN STAFF: LOOKING FOR CONFIGURABILITY AND EASY-OF-USE

Researcher

Institution

Admin staff

End User

Other institutions

Ok, but with all these frequent staff and department changes, I really want something

that is easy to maintain...

4. END USERS: EXPECTING THE SAME USABILITY OF OTHER CONTEMPORARY WEBSITES

Researcher

Institution

Admin staff

End User

Other institutions

Without a user-friendly solution for searching/ browsing information, I’m not really

encouraged to discover all that research...

5. OTHER INSTITUTIONS: LOOKING FOR OPPORTUNITIES TO WORK TOGETHER

Researcher

Institution

Admin staff

End User

Other institutions

Some of our research is quite related to theirs... it might be interesting to “harvest” their scientific output in our own repository

DSPACE: AN OPEN-SOURCE REPOSITORY SOLUTION, DESIGNED FOR SUCH USE CASES

Researcher

Institution

Admin staff

End User

Other institutionsDSpace

HOW DOES DSPACE DO THAT?

Let’s go through some examples of live repositories and see how DSpace caters for these needs...

1. CONTENT DISSEMINATIONEXAMPLE: UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN

DSpace allows institutions to easily disseminate their

scientific output

Descriptive metadata on Item Pages (also indexed by search engines)

2. PUBLISHING WORKFLOWEXAMPLE: DEFAULT DSPACE

User-friendly submission interface for helping

submitters to add new content

Assistance for Administrators to review and validate these items

3. HIERARCHICAL CONTENT MODELEXAMPLE: WORLD BANK

4. CONTENT DISCOVERYEXAMPLE: SAM (PARIS TECH UNIVERSITY)

browse results, or gradually refine your search by adding “filters”

5. AUTOMATED COLLECTION OF STATISTICSEXAMPLE: DEFAULT DSPACE

How many times did people visit this item?

How “productive” is my current

Validation Workflow?What are our

visitors looking for?

6. CONFIGURABLE AND OPEN SOURCEEXAMPLE: UNIVERSITY OF LILLE

Custom user interface, based on standard Mirage theme

7. INTEROPERABILITY

Apache Tomcat Apache HTTP Server

WHAT DSPACE IS NOT (YET?)

• DSpace does not have a hierarchical item model

• The DSpace object model is inherently flat.

• DSpace does not have a CRIS-like object model

• Items are objects with their own metadata

• Authors and Departments are not!

• Dspace does not have a standardized API that opens the full functionality of DSpace to external applications

• Current integration focus is on OAI and SWORD

• REST API is candidate to become the first true “API” of DSpace (...but which one will make it?)

WHAT IT IS NOTNO HIERARCHICAL ITEMS - (SIMPLICITY!)

0..*1Community Collection

ItemBundle

Bitstream FormatBitstream

0..*0..1

0..*

0..1

1..*1

1..*

1

0..*1

0..*

0..*










WHAT IT IS NOT“FLAT” METADATA SCHEMA

0..*1Community Collection

ItemBundle

Bitstream FormatBitstream

0..*0..1

0..*

0..1

1..*1

1..*

1

0..*1

0..*

0..*

Author

Not stored as an object, but as metadata with the Item

Affiliation

Project










WHAT IT IS NOTSTRONG FOCUS ON DEPOSIT/ HARVESTING

DSpace

OAI

Sword

External system doing a submission

External system doing a harvest

repository deposit

repository harvesting

WHAT IT IS NOT...BUT NOT YET A STANDARDIZED “API”

DSpace

OAI

Sword



repository deposit


???

External system querying DSpace

External system retrieving Item

metadata


bitstream

See further: REST API?

DSPACE IS SOFTWARE “IN EVOLUTION”




2010-2011: DSPACE 1.7IMPROVEMENTS TO THE BASE THEME

DSpace 1.7 1.8 3.x

20/10/2010

Basic search & Browse

XMLUI theme, but still rather difficult to

customize

2010-2011: DSPACE 1.7IMPROVEMENTS TO THE BASE THEME

DSpace 1.7 1.8 3.x

Source: https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSDOC17/History

2011-2012: DSPACE 1.8FINAL RELEASE OF “FACETED SEARCH”

DSpace 1.7 1.8 3.x

Much better search & browse experience

for end users

2011-2012: DSPACE 1.8 CONFIGURABLE WORKFLOWS

DSpace 1.7 1.8 3.x

Ability to configure the order in which workflow steps are

executed

2011-2012: DSPACE 1.8BETTER TECHNIQUES FOR QUALITY ASSURANCE

DSpace 1.7 1.8 3.x

2012-2013: DSPACE 3.XSNIPPETS, HIGHLIGHTING, RELATED ITEMS

DSpace 1.7 3.x1.8

2012-2013: DSPACE 3.XBETA FEATURE: ITEM VERSIONING

DSpace 1.7 3.x1.8

Basic support for Item Versioning (BETA)

OVERVIEW




OVERVIEW

1. Trend towards “Social/ Sharing”

2. Further Systems Integration (REST)

3. Advanced Authority (ORCID)

1. SHARING & SOCIAL MEDIARECENT QUESTIONS FROM OUR CLIENTS

“How can we help end users to share their favorite items on Facebook?”

“Users should have their private “item basket” in DSpace, in which

they keep their favorite items”“Is there a way to send automated

updates to Facebook when we submit a new item to DSpace?”

“We have a lot of visual content. Can our visitors somehow share these images on their Pinterest site? This would drive traffic to our repository”

“Can we extend the Item pages in DSpace to allow visitors to rate an item and provide

user comments?”

1. SHARING & SOCIAL MEDIA - CASE STUDYFROM A REPOSITORY TARGETING EXPERT USERS...

1. SHARING & SOCIAL MEDIA - CASE STUDY...TO A SOCIAL PLATFORM FOR NON-EXPERTS



Virtual expositions allow users to discover

the content of the repository

OVERVIEW




2. THE REST APIFURTHER SYSTEMS INTEGRATION

DSpace

OAI

Sword



repository deposit


REST API

External system querying DSpace


metadata


bitstream

However...many many many

discussions ongoing...

OVERVIEW




RESEARCHERS ARE MOBILE PEOPLE...

• When I move to another institution, I will typically receive a new staff ID

• Often, this staff ID will be used as an “authority”, linked to the papers I submit in that institution’s repository

• ...but my other papers at my previous institution will still contain my other staff ID....

• How do I ensure that both sets are linked to me?

...AND THEY OFTEN WORK TOGETHER ACROSS UNIVERSITIES

• I recently wrote a paper together with a colleague from another university

• We are now archiving this paper in our respective repositories

• Since I don’t have a staff ID at the other institution, how can my colleague still include my name with authority control?

• See also: duplicate detection in the context of nation-wide harvesting (Belgium, France, ...)

SOLUTION PROPOSED BY ORCID

SO TO CONCLUDE....WE HAVE LOTS OF IDEAS FOR DISCUSSION :)

• Is DSpace evolving too slow? Too fast?

• How do you want to see DSpace evolve?

• More social? (Facebook, Twitter, User profiles?)

• More expert-minded? (Endnote, Zotero, Orcid, ...)

• More mobile? (More development effort on tablet and smartphone version?)

• More CRIS-like? (Organisation Units, Research Projects and Researchers as first class objects with their own metadata?)

• Do you think the REST API is a core feature for the next release of DSpace? Should it be integrated in the core, or released as add-on module?

IT WOULD BE GREAT TO DISCUSS SOME OF THESE ELEMENTS WITH YOU TODAY!!

Technology

DSpace: State of the art