Ariadne88This is a very thoughtful and interesting presentation. I really like your point about replicating in IRs what we have done with collections in print. I currently intern at an IR, and am learning a lot about the process and the politics, and slideshows like this really open up my eyes to a few things.
Scott Leslie, Educational Technologist at BCcampusThis is so spot on. It is kind of embarrassing to admit as someone who has been in the 'repository' business far too long, but it wasn't until last year that I stopped thinking of 'search engine optimization' as the dirty words they are so often understood as.4 years ago
http://www.flickr.com/photos/striatic/729822/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/estherase/128983854/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bwr/327994546/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/pbo31/96243148/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/dullhunk/303503677/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/good_day/212468675/4 years ago
Web 2.0 and repositories - have we got our repository architecture right?Presentation Transcript
Web 2.0 and repositories… … have we got our repository architecture right?
Outline
where are we now?
what’s wrong with where we are now?
what can we do about it?
do we need a new vision?
Where are we now?
where are we now?
What is a repository? a university-based institutional repository is a set of services that a university offers to the members of its community for the management and dissemination of digital materials created by the institution and its community members. It is most essentially an organizational commitment to the stewardship of these digital materials, including long-term preservation where appropriate, as well as organization and access or distribution . … An institutional repository is not simply a fixed set of software and hardware (Cliff Lynch, 2003)
Repository “doing” words
manage
deposit
disclose
make openly available
curate
preserve
Repository content
all sorts… but most “academic” focus currently on
scholarly publications
learning objects
research data
Repository content
all sorts… but most “academic” focus currently on
scholarly publications
learning objects
research data
this talk focuses on the first of these, but with the intention that most of what I say will be generic
Repository architecture
largely institutional focus though some exceptions – arXiv, RePEC, JORUM, etc.
interoperability through centralised aggregators (national and global)
search services (OAIster, Intute, …)
registries (DOAR, ROAR, …)
harvesting metadata about content using OAI-PMH (metadata = simple Dublin Core)
content = PDF
SWORD as deposit API
What’s “wrong” with where we are now?
what’s “ wrong ” with where we are now?
#1 We talk about “repositories”…
…rather than “the Web” a focus on ‘ making content available on the Web’ would be more intuitive to researchers
Whatever happened to the CMS?
a focus on ‘ content management ’ would change our emphasis
OAI-PMH out…
search engine optimisation, usability, accessibility, Web design, tagging, information architecture, cool URIs in…
#2 We don’t emphasise…
Google indexing
RSS feeds
widget technology – embedding functionality into other sites
#3 Our focus is on sharing metadata…
… even though we have full-text to share
worse… the full-text we share tends to be PDF rather than native Web format
the Web equivalent of a cul de sac
and the metadata we share tends to be “simple Dublin Core”
little consistency in approaches to describing ‘files’ vs. ‘documents’
little consistency in naming authors and subjects
ultimately, it is both too simple and too complex!
#4 We ignore the Web Architecture
we have tended to adopt service oriented approaches
in line with long tradition from Z39.50 to SOAP/WSDL
e.g. JISC eFramework
focus is on building “services on content” rather than on the “content”
pbo31 @ flickr
REST is good
we don’t tend to adopt a resource oriented approach
we don’t adopt REST – an architectural style with a focus on resources, their identifiers (e.g. URIs), and a simple uniform set of operations that each resource supports (e.g. GET, PUT, POST, DELETE)
we don’t encourage a Web style “follow your nose” approach
#5 We are antisocial…
… at least, we tend to treat “content” in isolation from the “social networks” that need to grow around that content
successful “repositories” (Flickr, YouTube, Slideshare, etc.) promote the social activity that takes place around content as well as the content management and disclosure activity
friends, groups, social tagging, comments, embedding, re-purposing, etc.
But not just about functionality…
the institutional approach has fundamental mismatch with the real-life social networks adopted by researchers
subject-based
cross-institutional
global
while institutional approach is good from perspective of institutional management, preservation, etc.
globally “concentrated” repositories might better reflect the social networks that need to arise
The net effect…
… is that there is no net effect
repositories remain uncompelling places to disclose scholarly publications from POV of the researcher
perceived cost of deposit remains higher than perceived benefits
we resort to institutional or funder mandates, “thou shalt deposit”, to fill what would otherwise remain empty
Wait just a minute…
didn’t we used to have globally “concentrated” repository services?
arXiv – the first Web 2.0 service?
invented before the Web
unfortunately, also invented before Amazon S3
i.e. before we knew how to scale things
Wait just another minute…
… doesn’t the blogsphere successfully layer a set of globally concentrated services over a distributed network of content?
e.g. Technorati
yes… but…
the content is under the control of ‘individuals’ rather than ‘institutions’, and…
the interoperability “glue” (RSS and tagging) is very lightweight and RESTful
Having the conversation is hard
highly political space
strong “open access” voices who, understandably, don’t want their agenda de-railed by discussion about
preservation
search engine optimisation
Web 2.0
social networks
semantic Web
the future of peer review
it can be hard to get the conversation started
What can we do about it?
what can we do about it?
Things can go two ways… I think that things can go two ways… The Web 2.0 Way or The Semantic Web Way … possibly both
Things can go two ways… what would a Web 2.0 repository look like?
Thanks for creating this! 3 years ago
http://www.flickr.com/photos/striatic/729822/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/estherase/128983854/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bwr/327994546/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pbo31/96243148/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/dullhunk/303503677/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/good_day/212468675/ 4 years ago