DRC-Dev Team

On April 22 I wrote that it looked like OhioLINK would be using Fedora to build the Digital Resource Commons rather than Documentum. That's indeed what's happening. Fedora is an open access software developed at Cornell. (Interestingly, the Cornell librarians at ASEE reported they are not using Fedora at Cornell for their digital archive....) The University of Virginia is using Fedora as its platform though, and has done much development work.

Fedora out of the box is very "raw," a basic structure upon which to build. It is supposedly very robust, allowing capabilities not provided by other open access software such as DSpace. For example it allows not only cross-collection searching, but more importantly, the specification of object to object relationships. It enables mixing object types (videos, text, data sets, simulations, etc.) and varying uses (e-publishing, repositories, exhibitions, portfolios, etc.).

Peter Murray is heading the OhioLINK DRC-Development Team meetings. The conference calls are interesting, with participants from across Ohio, plus developers at OhioLINK itself. As Peter stated, the change from using a proprietary software such as Documentum to an open access softare such as Fedora signals a change in OhioLINK's approach to system development. OhioLINK members have become engaged in the development process via the DRC-Dev team. The project can be viewed at http://drc-dev.ohiolink.edu/wiki .

Today the DRC-Dev conference call struggled with the concept of object-specific application profiles and where the application profile for the metadata should reside - with the object? with a collection? Having different metadata sets for different types of objects means having different ingestion profiles for entering data into the system. This can get confusing, depending on who is doing the inputting. A trained team of "ingesters" is different than occasional inputting by faculty participating in a department repository. We want adequately to describe various objects while at the same time supporting global retrieval of all content.

I will be participating on the development team, lending what insight I can relating to

• supporting teaching and research needs in terms of function
• contributing content
• helping to track relevant technologies
• sharing ideas on what the DRC should look like
• planning to use the DRC in my work.

The DRC will be the platform where I hope to put the engineering repository. It will be a while before it's ready....