1. Boston University Digital
Commons
TECHNOLOGY SHOWCASE
JOE AHEARN
3 APRIL 2012

2. Introduction
 http://dcommon.bu.edu/xmlui/

3. Content
Lots of digitized historical content; also
lots of current engineering, medical and
scientific articles
PDF, txt, djvu file formats

4. Architecture
 Repository uses standard Dspace architecture:
communities, sub-communities, collections

5. Metadata
 Qualified Dublin Core metadata
 Example fields: dc.contributor.author, dc.date.accessioned,
dc.date.available, dc.date.issued, dc.identifier.uri,
dc.description.abstract, dc.description.sponsorship,
dc.language.iso, dc.publisher, dc.relation.ispartofseries,
dc.title, dc.type
 Filename, size, file format automatically generated
and appear as part of the full item record
 Interoperability would seem to be assured by use of
limited, standard metadata set

6. Metadata (II)

7. Interface
 Manakin (Mirage XMLUI theme) interface
 https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/Mirage+XMLUI
+Theme+and+Restructured+dri2xhtml+for+DSpace+1.7
 Heavily customized
 XHTML
 Multiple CSS style sheets
 JavaScript
 Atom/RSS syndication feeds
 Search/browse boxes
 Help links

8. Alignment with Institutional Mission
 Hard to judge this, not being a member of the
institution
 Good alignment with BU Libraries strategic plan.
(See http://www.bu.edu/library/about/strategic-
plan-9-06.html)
 Good alignment with university mission statement:
“research, scholarship, artistic creation, and
professional practice should be conducted in the
service of the wider community—local and
international.”

9. Interesting Features
 Non-BU users can subscribe to collections to receive
email about updates

10. Interesting Features (II)
 Excellent user help. Lots of policy information is
presented in FAQ in user-friendly language.

11. Interesting Features (III)
Good use of help screen real estate:
Recent news about digital initiatives
at BU, relevant articles, recommended
readings, Twitter updates, etc.

12. Areas for Improvement
 Repository is under-used. Only 3209 submissions as
of 3-31-12. Many collections are completely empty.
 Although FAQ advertises that repository is open to
submissions of data sets, there do not appear to be
any.
 Collections appear to be dominated by textual
artifacts—didn’t find media, illustrations, data.

13. That’s All, Folks
 Questions?
 Comments?