Introduction to DSpace

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MacKenzie Smith Associate Director for
Technology MIT Libraries
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Agenda

• Introduction
• DSpace demo
• Technical architecture
• Organizational model
• MIT case study
• DSpace Federation
• QA at the end of each presentation
• General QA at the close

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DSPACEINTRODUCTION
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DSpace

• Vision (1999)
• A federated repository that makes available the
  collective intellectual resources of the worlds
  leading research institutions
• Mission
• Create a scalable digital archive that preserves
  and communicates the intellectual output of MITs
  faculty and researchers
• Support adoption by and federation with other
  research institutions

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DSpace is

• An open source technology platform
• A service model for open access and/or digital
  archiving
• A platform to build an Institutional Repository
• A (proposed) federation of digital repositories
  across multiple academic research institutions
• A production service of the MIT Libraries to the
  local research community

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Institutional Repositories

• Institution-based
• Scholarly material in digital formats
• Cumulative and perpetual
• Open and interoperable

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The DSpace Repository

• Institutional Repository for MIT facultys
  digital research materials
• MIT Libraries - Hewlett Packard Research Labs
  collaborative development project
• Open Source system
• Federated system
• Preservation archive

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DSpace Functions

• Captures
• Digital research material (any format)
• Directly from creators (e.g. faculty)
• Large-scale, stable, managed long-term storage
• Describes
• Descriptive, technical, rights metadata
• Persistent identifiers
• Distributes
• Via WWW, with necessary access control
• Preserves

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Possible Content

• Preprints, articles
• Technical Reports
• Working Papers
• Conference Papers
• E-theses
• Datasets
• statistical, geospatial, matlab, etc.

• Images
• visual, scientific, etc.
• Audio files
• Video files
• Learning Objects
• Reformatted digital library collections

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Why Libraries?

• Expertise
• Large-scale collection management
• Assessment/collection policies
• preservation
• Metadata
• Solid business practices
• Commitment
• Long time frames
• Mission scope

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CHALLENGES
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Challenges

• Faculty Acceptance
• Valuing and trusting an institutional archive
• Sustainability
• institutional, financial
• Digital Preservation

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Digital Preservation

• Philosopy
• Lots of digital material is already lost
• Most digital material is at risk
• Better to have it, do bit preservation, than to
  lose it completely
• Need to capture as much information as possible
  to support functional preservation
• Cost/benefit tradeoffs

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Digital Preservation

• MITs commitment levels
• Known/supported
• TIFF, SGML/XML, AIFF, PDF
• Known/unsupported
• Microsoft Word, PowerPoint (common, proprietary)
• Lotus 1-2-3, Visicalc, WordPerfect (less common)
• Unknown/unsupported
• One-of-a-kind software program

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Digital Preservation

• Supported migration and/or emulation
• Migration for texts, images, audio, etc.
• Emulation for software, multimedia?
• Unsupported
• Bit preservation at minimum
• Format migration where possible
• Commercial conversion services
• Global Digital Format Registry

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DESIGN
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Information Model

• Communities
• Research units of the organization
• Collections (in communities)
• Distinct groupings of like items
• Items (in collections)
• Logical content objects
• Receive persistent identifier
• Bitstreams (in items)
• Individual files
• Receive preservation treatment

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Information Model

• Versioning
• Item versions can be
• All instances of a work in different formats
• E.g. the XML, PDF, and PostScript versions
• All editions of a work over time
• Official changes (e.g. addenda or new release)
• Periodic snapshots (e.g. web sites)
• Metadata lists all available versions of items

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Communities

• Research units of the organization
• Schools, Departments, Research Labs, Research
  Centers, Programs, etc.
• Individuals
• Community home page with logo, custom
  description, etc.
• Or contract with library

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Communities

• Local, distributed policy decisions
• Who can contribute, access material
• Submission workflow
• Submitters, approvers, reviewers, editors
• Collections definition, management
• Local, distributed production work
• Communities supply metadata, files
• Partnership between library and communities

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Communities
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EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY
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Problem

• Lack of persistent repository for Learning
  Objects
• Needed for reuse of
• Entire courses
• Useful learning objects
• Prior efforts not institution-based
• Merlot, HEAL, etc.

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Open Knowledge Initiative

• Defines API for interoperation between
• Course/Learning Management Systems
• Open source (e.g. Coursework, Stellar)
• Commercial (e.g. Blackboard, WebCT)
• Digital Repositories
• Open source (e.g. DSpace, FEDORA)
• Commercial (e.g. TEAMS, Bulldog)
• Collaborating with IMS Digital Repository working
  group

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OpenCourseWare

• Make MIT course materials that are used in the
  teaching of almost all undergraduate and graduate
  subjects available on the Web, free of charge, to
  any user anywhere in the world.
• Course materials contained on the MIT OCW Web
  site may be used, copied, distributed,
  translated, and modified, but only for
  non-commercial educational purposes that are made
  freely available to other users under the same
  terms defined by the MIT OCW legal notice.

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OpenCourseWare

• Publication of all course content on the Web
• Faculty-authored
• 3rd party produced
• Metadata based on IMS specifications
• DSpace
• Archive for entire course web site
• Archive of significant content items or learning
  assets for rediscovery and reuse

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Metadata

• SIMILE
• Flexible metadata infrastructure
• e.g. support for IMS/SCORM schema
• HP/MIT Alliance-funded project
• HP Labs
• W3Cs Semantic Web activity
• MIT Lab for Computer Science researcher (David
  Karger) Haystack project on personalized
  information management
• MIT Libraries DSpace providing test-bed,
  real-world applications

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RESEARCH AGENDA
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Further RD

• Digital preservation
• Datasets, multimedia, websites, programs
• Economics and user requirements
• Publishing
• E-journal alternatives
• Collaborative, iterative authoring tools
• Rights management for academia

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