EPrints is at ECDL co-running a preservation workshop with the Planets project.
We've covered a lot of the theory of preservation, and have also done some practical exercises showing the forthcoming EPrints 3.2 features that assist with the preservation agenda.
Firstly we had them playing with the new storage layer. This enables repositories to control the locations in which files are stored. We covered how to set storage policies, report on how many files were in each supported storage area (local, cloud, etc), and copy items between locations.
The second set of exercises covered preservation file format risk assessment. EPrints 3.2 can keep track of and report on the preservation risk status of the content (assuming a sensibly configured repository). Migration of 'at risk' formats could be done automatically, but that's still in the future...
The slides and EPrints exercises are available here.
It's been a great day. An active bunch of attendees who had lots of questions were really enthusiastic about the subject.
Sunday, 27 September 2009
Monday, 14 September 2009
EPrints at Blogtalk 09
Warm and humid Jeju island, the favoured honeymoon destination of South Koreans, is hosting Blogtalk 09. Palm trees, teddy bears, life-sized plastic dinosaurs and luxury hotels all within walking distance of the beach. The view of the sea from the conference venue is somewhat distracting.
It's hard to talk about social networking without hyperbole (the talks have been full of superlatives). It's certainly important, and the possibilities for EPrints in this area have not yet been fully explored. The Sneep plugin, which enabled commenting on publication records, was very well received, but it is only scratching the surface of what's possible. I'm here to get a feel for what's going on at the moment and how this could be applied to EPrints.
A very interesting first day Keynote about the evolution of data access from Issac Mao posited that the sharing of information constituted a public 'mind'. Data creators acted as 'neurons', enabling hard problems to be solved thought distributed discourse. Blogging and micro-blogging are analogous to neurons firing - or so the speaker thought.
How can repositories leverage this? Academic publishing is social in nature, and the brain analogy works here too. If an academic paper can be said to be the equivalent of a blog post, what is the academic equivalent of a tweet? How can we support more fine-grained academic discourse? And is the repository the right place to do this?
Hmmmm....
It's hard to talk about social networking without hyperbole (the talks have been full of superlatives). It's certainly important, and the possibilities for EPrints in this area have not yet been fully explored. The Sneep plugin, which enabled commenting on publication records, was very well received, but it is only scratching the surface of what's possible. I'm here to get a feel for what's going on at the moment and how this could be applied to EPrints.
A very interesting first day Keynote about the evolution of data access from Issac Mao posited that the sharing of information constituted a public 'mind'. Data creators acted as 'neurons', enabling hard problems to be solved thought distributed discourse. Blogging and micro-blogging are analogous to neurons firing - or so the speaker thought.
How can repositories leverage this? Academic publishing is social in nature, and the brain analogy works here too. If an academic paper can be said to be the equivalent of a blog post, what is the academic equivalent of a tweet? How can we support more fine-grained academic discourse? And is the repository the right place to do this?
Hmmmm....
Tuesday, 2 June 2009
Creative repositories for the arts
A repository which will make it possible for colleges and individuals in the arts to store and present their work in a creative way will be unveiled tomorrow (Wednesday 3 June).
Kultur, a project that is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and that uses the world-leading EPrints software from the University of Southampton, has developed a joint pilot repository for the University of the Arts London, the University for the Creative Arts and Winchester School of Art at the University of Southampton. The project will be officially completed tomorrow and an event to mark the occasion will be held at Whitechapel Art Gallery.
'Up to now, the focus of most repositories has been science and engineering and published articles,' said Dr Leslie Carr, Technical Director of EPrints, based at the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science. 'Kultur has provided us with an opportunity to use EPrints to develop the first comprehensive institutional repository for the arts.'
The Kultur project provides a flexible, multimedia pilot repository capable of showcasing a wide range of outputs from digital versions of paintings, photography, film, graphic and textile design to records of performances, shows and installations.
The three institutions involved will now develop their own open repositories to store and showcase their creative work.
'This will make an immense difference to our institutions,' said Andrew Gray, Kultur Project Officer, University of the Arts. 'It is the first repository of its kind in the arts world; there are others but there hasn't been a visual one. The benefit of Kultur is that it will enable us to share our practice-based research across our colleges and with other institutions.'
'It will also open up the art world, which will link up the often lone artist with the wider arts community,' Dr Carr added.
The pilot repository will be showcased at Whitechapel Art Gallery between 6-8pm tomorrow. The event will include presentations from Andy McGregor, JISC, Seymour Roworth-Stokes, Pro Vice Chancellor of Research at University for the Creative Arts, Andrew Carnie, Researcher at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton and Pat Christie, Director of Library and Learning Resources, University of the Arts.
Kultur was collaboration between all three institutions listed in partnership with the Visual Arts Data Service and EPrints. EPrints software developed in 2000 by the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science is used in hundreds of institutional repositories (IRs) around the world.
For information about Kultur, please visit: http://kultur.eprints.org/.
Kultur, a project that is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) and that uses the world-leading EPrints software from the University of Southampton, has developed a joint pilot repository for the University of the Arts London, the University for the Creative Arts and Winchester School of Art at the University of Southampton. The project will be officially completed tomorrow and an event to mark the occasion will be held at Whitechapel Art Gallery.
'Up to now, the focus of most repositories has been science and engineering and published articles,' said Dr Leslie Carr, Technical Director of EPrints, based at the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science. 'Kultur has provided us with an opportunity to use EPrints to develop the first comprehensive institutional repository for the arts.'
The Kultur project provides a flexible, multimedia pilot repository capable of showcasing a wide range of outputs from digital versions of paintings, photography, film, graphic and textile design to records of performances, shows and installations.
The three institutions involved will now develop their own open repositories to store and showcase their creative work.
'This will make an immense difference to our institutions,' said Andrew Gray, Kultur Project Officer, University of the Arts. 'It is the first repository of its kind in the arts world; there are others but there hasn't been a visual one. The benefit of Kultur is that it will enable us to share our practice-based research across our colleges and with other institutions.'
'It will also open up the art world, which will link up the often lone artist with the wider arts community,' Dr Carr added.
The pilot repository will be showcased at Whitechapel Art Gallery between 6-8pm tomorrow. The event will include presentations from Andy McGregor, JISC, Seymour Roworth-Stokes, Pro Vice Chancellor of Research at University for the Creative Arts, Andrew Carnie, Researcher at Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton and Pat Christie, Director of Library and Learning Resources, University of the Arts.
Kultur was collaboration between all three institutions listed in partnership with the Visual Arts Data Service and EPrints. EPrints software developed in 2000 by the University of Southampton’s School of Electronics and Computer Science is used in hundreds of institutional repositories (IRs) around the world.
For information about Kultur, please visit: http://kultur.eprints.org/.
Monday, 1 June 2009
EPrints working with Sun's Cloud Storage Service
As part of Sun Microsystem's Preservation Archiving Special Interest Group (PASIG), the EPrints team have been collaborating with Sun to enable EPrints to be used with archival storage products, such as the Honeycomb (STK-5800).
We are pleased to announce that we have been working collaboratively with Sun's Cloud Computing Unit to allow the EPrints Storage Controller to link to the forthcoming Sun Cloud Storage Service (due for release later this year). A demonstration is available at this week's Community One conference in San Francisco. EPrints is one of a few software products to have gained an entry in the early adopters catalog (available at the conference).
With an Amazon S3 plugin already available for the EPrints Storage controller, Sun's Cloud Storage Service was the logical next step in terms of cloud providers and EPrints hopes in the future to release a connector for the Microsoft Azure platform as well as the DuraSpace proposed DuraCloud service.
Watch this space for more EPrints 3.2 news!
This collaboration has informed the development of the new EPrints 3.2 Storage Controller that enables the repository to distribute its objects between many storage platforms according to the rules laid down in an XML policy language. Hybrid storage provides the maximum flexibility for storage decisions based on object properties and related metadata, allowing multiple copies to be managed across local, archival and cloud storage services.
We are pleased to announce that we have been working collaboratively with Sun's Cloud Computing Unit to allow the EPrints Storage Controller to link to the forthcoming Sun Cloud Storage Service (due for release later this year). A demonstration is available at this week's Community One conference in San Francisco. EPrints is one of a few software products to have gained an entry in the early adopters catalog (available at the conference).
With an Amazon S3 plugin already available for the EPrints Storage controller, Sun's Cloud Storage Service was the logical next step in terms of cloud providers and EPrints hopes in the future to release a connector for the Microsoft Azure platform as well as the DuraSpace proposed DuraCloud service.
Watch this space for more EPrints 3.2 news!
Friday, 29 May 2009
Joint Preservation Workshop @ ECDL 2009 with EU Planets Project
On 27th September 2009 the EPrints Preservation Team along with some of the Planets Team will be giving a one day Tutorial/Workshop on bitstream preservation. This tutorial will be a one day event held at the start of the European Conference on Digital Libraries 2009 (ECDL2009) in Corfu.
The day will be split into two parts with morning will be dedicated to presentations on the importance of preservation, why you should have a preservation policy and introduce technologies which could help you both design that policy as well as enact it. In the afternoon delegates will be able to get hands on experience with some of the tools discussed in the morning session including the Plato preservation planning tool from Planets and the new features in EPrints 3.2 which allow you to build preservation into your digital repository.
This workshop will be an excellent event with your chance to meet with one of the many partners which the EPrints Preservation Team has been in constant communication with over the past few years. For more information and registration see the ECDL website here.
See you in Corfu!
The day will be split into two parts with morning will be dedicated to presentations on the importance of preservation, why you should have a preservation policy and introduce technologies which could help you both design that policy as well as enact it. In the afternoon delegates will be able to get hands on experience with some of the tools discussed in the morning session including the Plato preservation planning tool from Planets and the new features in EPrints 3.2 which allow you to build preservation into your digital repository.
This workshop will be an excellent event with your chance to meet with one of the many partners which the EPrints Preservation Team has been in constant communication with over the past few years. For more information and registration see the ECDL website here.
See you in Corfu!
Sunday, 17 May 2009
PhD studentship in Digital Rights and Digital Scholarship
EPrints Services are funding a PhD studentship in Digital Rights and Digital Scholarship at the EPSRC Web Science Doctoral Training Centre at the University of Southampton.
The Web has had a huge impact on society and on the scientific and scholarly communications process. As more attention is paid to new e-research and e-learning methodologies it is time to stand back and investigate how rights and responsibilities are understood when "copying", "publishing" and "syndicating" are fundamental activities of the interconnected digital world.
Applicants with a technical background (a good Bachelors degree in Computer Science, Information Science, Information Technology or similar) are invited for this 4-year research programme, which begins in October 2009 with a 1-year taught MSc in Web Science and is followed by a three year PhD supervised jointly by the School of Law and the School of Electronics and Computer Science. The full four-year scholarships (including stipend) is available to UK residents.
EPrints Services provide repository hosting, training and bespoke development for the research community and are funding this research opportunity to promote understanding of the context of the future scholarly environment.
Further information:
EPSRC Web Science Doctoral Training: http://webscience.ecs.soton.ac.uk/dtc
EPrints Services: http://www.eprints.org/
Enquiries should be addressed to Dr Leslie Carr (lac@ecs.soton.ac.uk) in the first instance.
Monday, 23 March 2009
Free Training Course for the Tecchies
A free day-long EPrints training course is being hosted by JISC's Repository Support Project in Liverpool on April 22nd, and we've decided that as the last one was targeted at Library Staff, we'd tailor this one for the systems staff and developers.
In the morning we will introduce some of the API, and show how to use the configuration files to modify the abstract page, set default values on newly created EPrints, change render methods on metadata fields, etc.
In the morning we will introduce some of the API, and show how to use the configuration files to modify the abstract page, set default values on newly created EPrints, change render methods on metadata fields, etc.
The afternoon will cover API Scripting and Plugins. We'll take a more in-depth look at the API. Exercises will cover using scripts to manage the records in your repository and the changing of the behaviour of EPrints through plugin modification and creation.
Details on how to sign up are available on the RSP events page:
http://www.rsp.ac.uk/events/We look forward to seeing you there.
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