Technology showcase
- 1. Boston University Digital Commons TECHNOLOGY SHOWCASE JOE AHEARN 3 APRIL 2012
- 3. Content Lots of digitized historical content; also lots of current engineering, medical and scientific articles PDF, txt, djvu file formats
- 4. Architecture Repository uses standard Dspace architecture: communities, sub-communities, collections
- 5. Metadata Qualified Dublin Core metadata Example fields: dc.contributor.author, dc.date.accessioned, dc.date.available, dc.date.issued, dc.identifier.uri, dc.description.abstract, dc.description.sponsorship, dc.language.iso, dc.publisher, dc.relation.ispartofseries, dc.title, dc.type Filename, size, file format automatically generated and appear as part of the full item record Interoperability would seem to be assured by use of limited, standard metadata set
- 7. Interface Manakin (Mirage XMLUI theme) interface https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/Mirage+XMLUI +Theme+and+Restructured+dri2xhtml+for+DSpace+1.7 Heavily customized XHTML Multiple CSS style sheets JavaScript Atom/RSS syndication feeds Search/browse boxes Help links
- 8. Alignment with Institutional Mission Hard to judge this, not being a member of the institution Good alignment with BU Libraries strategic plan. (See http://www.bu.edu/library/about/strategic- plan-9-06.html) Good alignment with university mission statement: “research, scholarship, artistic creation, and professional practice should be conducted in the service of the wider community—local and international.”
- 9. Interesting Features Non-BU users can subscribe to collections to receive email about updates
- 10. Interesting Features (II) Excellent user help. Lots of policy information is presented in FAQ in user-friendly language.
- 11. Interesting Features (III) Good use of help screen real estate: Recent news about digital initiatives at BU, relevant articles, recommended readings, Twitter updates, etc.
- 12. Areas for Improvement Repository is under-used. Only 3209 submissions as of 3-31-12. Many collections are completely empty. Although FAQ advertises that repository is open to submissions of data sets, there do not appear to be any. Collections appear to be dominated by textual artifacts—didn’t find media, illustrations, data.
- 13. That’s All, Folks Questions? Comments?
Editor's Notes
- #3: Reasons I chose this repository:-- Dspace-- Clean, attractive interface-- University library-- Not part of UT-- Many types of contentFeel free to pull up site in your web browser and follow along
- #4: I was impressed that the BU repository was not just for theses and dissertations, but had a place for many types of content from many different schools within the university.And I was interested in the range of content
- #5: Communities are based on Schools/Colleges/Centers and other major university administrative units. Sub-communities are at the department level.