Back to ECECS

Not to drop the ball with ECECS, today I visited Hal Carter again to review our institutional repository idea in light of the OhioLINK delay. Hal introduced me to Chris Isbell, who has worked to mount the first reports locally. Chris told me that he used an open access content management software called Metadot to build the web site. For a small department it works fine. You can authenticate users with it, build your own "gizmos" etc, in PERL. Peter Murray at OhioLINK is aware of the software. Fine for what it does, but of course doesn't have the power for digital media that Fedora will provide for the DRC.

In discussing metadata and other preparations for eventual migration to OhioLINK, Hal gave me a useful description of systems design engineering basics. The system can be designed, the metadata defined, etc after crucial questions have been answered.

Q1: who are the customers, primary and secondary? They must be defined.
Q2: what are the products?
Q3: who are the producers of products to meet the needs of the consumers/customers?
Q4: what is the infrastructure? (web for distribution? environment, procedures, standards)

Producers: produce info, need an interface, audit function, standards
Products: directly disseminated? archived?
Consumer: need assessment of security, protection for product, etc.

Hal recommended that I see Karen Davis, who teaches database design, modelling, metadata, etc.