DigitalKoans

The DRAMA team has released a Solr plug-in for Fedora.

Here's a description of Solr from its home page:

Solr is an open source enterprise search server based on the Lucene Java search library, with XML/HTTP and JSON APIs, hit highlighting, faceted search, caching, replication, and a web administration interface. It runs in a Java servlet container such as Tomcat.

A recently updated description of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation's Shared Digital Repository Project is available at Indiana University's Project: Shared Digital Repository page.

Here's an excerpt:

Description: The Shared Digital Repository (SDR) leverages the tradition of leadership in collaboration among the institutions of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC). The SDR operates under the leadership of the Repository Administrators (Indiana University and the University of Michigan), which also provide a large part of the funding. Additional governance and financial support are provided by the charter participating libraries of the CIC, and by other libraries and library consortia wishing to archive digital content.

Outcome: The SDR offers persistent and high-availability storage for digitized book and journal content, beginning with the Google content from the CIC members and later extending to other digitized content. The SDR will leverage technology investments and developments at the University of Michigan to build (through IU/UM collaboration) more generalized versions of Michigan's services and gain efficiencies from Michigan's investments. . . .

Milestones and status:

As of April 11, 2008, the SDR contains:

• 1,122,007 volumes
• 791,460 titles
• approximately 393 million pages
• 213,379 individual volumes in the public domain (19% of the total)

Timeline:

• Early 2008: Bloomington backup storage installed
• January-March 2008: Page turner mechanism with branding; ability to publish virtual collections (UM-specific version); assessment of global searching functionality; access mechanisms for persons with visual disabilities
• September-December 2008: Mechanism for direct ingest of non-Google content; compliance with the required elements in the "Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification (TRAC): Criteria and Checklist"

Aberystwyth University has launched CADAIR, its DSpace-based institutional repository.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The new service has been developed by the Subject Support and E-Library team in Information Services, led by Dr Talat Chaudhri and Stuart Lewis.

A successful two year pilot project, during which the team worked closely with the Departments of Computer Science and Information Studies, and the Institute of Mathematics and Physics, was concluded in early 2008. Currently the site features approximately 500 academic papers and dissertations by taught masters and PhD students.

The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL) has released Survey of Canadian and International Data Management Initiatives.

Here's an excerpt from the "Introduction":

Research libraries have a role to play in this emerging data-intensive environment. A 2007 CARL survey found that most CARL members are interested in managing research data, but few have a formal data archiving policy. CARL has formed a Research Data Management Working Group to assist members in collecting, organizing, preserving and providing access to the research data and to formulate a cooperative approach for CARL.

The purpose of this report is to provide an overview of the types of data management activities being undertaken in Canada and internationally. This review documents the various options available for libraries, and will pave the way for a more detailed investigation by the Working Group of the potential roles for libraries.

The Fedora Commons has released the second beta version of Fedora 3.0.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

Fedora 3.0 features the Content Model Architecture (CMA), an integrated structure for persisting and delivering the essential characteristics of digital objects in Fedora. . . . The Fedora CMA plays a central role in the Fedora architecture, in many ways forming the over-arching conceptual framework for future development of Fedora Repositories.

Like a well-thumbed book on a shelf, digital content is stored with the expectation that intellectual works will be the same each time they are accessed, whether the content was put away yesterday, or many years ago. Fedora is a simple, flexible and evolvable approach to delivering and sharing the "essential characteristics" of enduring digital content. Librarians, archivists, records managers, media producers, authors and publishers use patterns of expression formats such as books, journals, articles, collections to convey the essential characteristics of content. The capabilities of digital tools combined with essential characteristics of digital works result in well-understood patterns of expression for different types of content models.

The software engineering community also utilizes patterns of expression for the development of complex computer systems. The same concepts that satisfy agile IT infrastructures can help provide solutions for creating, accessing and preserving content. The Fedora CMA builds on the Fedora architecture-downloaded more than 18,000 times in the last 12 months—to simplify use while unlocking potential.

Dan Davis explains the CMA in the context of Fedora 3.0, "It's a hybrid. The Fedora CMA handles content models that are used by publishers and others, and is also a computer model that describes an information representation and processing architecture." By combining these viewpoints, Fedora CMA has the potential to provide a way to build an interoperable repository for integrated information access within organizations and to provide durable access to our intellectual works.

A transcript of the June 10, 2008 meeting between DSpace Foundation and Fedora Commons representatives about possible collaboration between these organizations has been released. A recording of most of the meeting is also available as an MP3 file.

The EThOSnet Project has released an updated version of the EThOS Toolkit.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

In addition to full details of how your institution can participate, the interactive Toolkit provides practical information on how theses can be produced by students at your Institution so they can be accessed via EThOS and from your Institutional Repository. Accessed from its new location at http://ethostoolkit.cranfield.ac.uk the toolkit provides guidance on:

• Putting forward the case for the importance of electronic theses (Culture Change)
• Outlining the business case including information on which participation options suit (Business Needs)
• Clear standards provided on technical requirements (Technical Requirements)
• Practical materials and templates to be used for authors and supervisors in contributing to EThOS (Training and Guidance)

The Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories has released presentations from its Identifying Researchers workshop. Both PDF and MP3 files are available.

Here's an excerpt from the workshop's web page:

The issue of managing researcher and author identities is a significant one that has an impact on a range of situations including, but not limited to, scholarly communications. This is an issue not only for researchers who nowadays interact with multiple identity and security systems but also for scholarly communications where the need to accurately identify authors and describe their scholarly resources is increasing in importance.