It seemed simple enough.  My first thought was to pull an RSS feed from DSpace into Yahoo! Pipes or a similar service. Then I would deploy a javascript widget from there.

Problem #1: Ideally you don’t want your RSS feeds spouting 80 items starting back in the 1990’s.

Problem #2: By default, the data in the feeds isn’t rich enough.  I need journal, volume, issue, etc.

My next go at it was to use DSpace’s OAI-PMH provider. This makes more sense than RSS. The data is rich, it’s all there, and I can specify sets or date ranges using Collection handles.

So what’s the drawback? The default metadata format for OAI in DSpace is oai_dc, i.e. unqualified Dublin Core, making it nigh impossible to distinguish published date from deposited date and publication source from handle URI.  This would exponentially complicate my simple little Pipe and make my brain hurt…alot.

The solution? Apply a Metadata Crosswalk Plugin for exposing QDC in OAI.  DSpace 1.5 even includes a preliminary crosswalk for this.  One more reason to expedite moving to 1.5.x.  We’re almost there anyway.*

*We’re still running DSpace 1.4 in production which does have a crosswalk plugin implementation known as XSLT Crosswalk but I’d rather devote my time to the upgrade.

Having been a frequent reader of Deepak Singh’s business|bytes|genes|molecules blog over the last year, I was interested to see him hired by Amazon as business development manager of Amazon Web Services.  On December 04, 2008, Deepak posted to the AWS blog the announcement of Public Data Sets on AWS.  PDS on AWS is a data sharing experiment that takes advantage of Amazon’s in-the-cloud storage and computing services.

Just two weeks after Deepak’s post, Clint Boulton at eWeek confirmed that Google had axed its own Research Datasets project along with other projects of questionable value to Google’s bottom line.  While sharing data across the web, publicly or not, will surely become more common among researchers, milking copious amounts of ad revenue from that sharing is less likely.

The storage and computation of large datasets appears to be more in line with the AWS business model and perhaps Amazon has the lead on scalable architecture to support cloud computing.   Even if large numbers of researchers and research projects store and crunch their data on the web, that in itself won’t score big in the social web scene.  Programmers, analysts, and machines are more likely to be interfacing directly with the data than are the research investigators themselves.

It’s yet to be seen what Microsoft’s strategy for data storage might be in the recently released Azure platform, but they obviously have eyes on the educational and research markets.  Products like live@edu and SharePoint are increasing Microsoft’s reach into the academic computing world.

The Microsoft Research group quietly released a beta version it’s own repository software, running on .NET and SQL Server of course, but this isn’t just a reformulation of Dspace using Microsoft ingredients:

“The platform focuses on the management of research assets-such as people, papers, lectures, workflows, data, and tags-as well as the semantic relationships between them.”

Sounds like they’re paying attention.  And they’re beginning to appeal in ecumenical fashion to the larger research community by offering things like OfficeSWORD and taking part in discussions about open research repositories.

What is most interesting from the perspectives of the library and the university’s research office is how these services will redefine our notion of the “institutional repository”.  On one hand, many IT services such as web hosting and email have been commoditized to the point that institutions, especially smaller publicly-funded campuses, are unable to resist the cost savings and agility that come from hosted services like live@edu.  Why not commit fully to the .NET architecture and have your institutional repository software and data hosted on Azure as well?

On the other hand, why not take advantage of AWS’ flexibility and scalability for storing data or running our repository application?

Regardless of the platform(s) we choose, our notion of “institutional repository” is going to be stretched as we want to aggregate data and services from multiple platforms.  How will our Dspace service reflect our data stored in AWS?  The building blocks are already in place to support more complex relationships between our repositories, services, and data.  The time has finally come to put them to work.

OpenCollection

collections management and online access application for museums, archives and digital collections.

Sophie

software for writing and reading rich media documents in a networked environment.

SEASR/NEMA

rich media analytics for humanists and artists.

Policy Archive, policyarchive.org

DSpace repository using the Manakin XMLUI. A comprehensive digital library of public policy research.

IMS Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) v2.0

guidelines for the interaction of tools with learning/course management systems. This is really about decoupling functionality from any single LMS. It would create a more pluggable model, enabling faculty or students to be application producers and Learning Management Systems and other applications to be consumers.

Fluid Project

collaborative project for developing and distributing a library of sharable customizable user interfaces designed to improve the user experience of web applications. Fluid is not only developing component libraries, but is also churning out research, education, and outreach about how to design user experiences.

VIVO at Cornell

discover who at Cornell is working on a particular research topic; what they’ve taught or published recently; where facilities might be and what online tools are available to expedite research. Powered by RDF and Semantic Web technologies.

I’m using Windows Live Writer to compose this post and I’ve been using it for about the last 3 months. It’s an enjoyable environment and definitely better than discovering that I lost an entire post because I forgot to periodically save while composing in Wordpress.

Jon Udell recently wrote an interesting post about Office Live. I found it compelling enough to try the free version. I would probably jump off a cliff if Jon recommended it. Of course, the requirement of using IE was annoying, but expected. The real problem, captured in my very first screencast, appeared after the Office Live registration process when I wanted to begin using the service. I did not alter or edit the capture at all. This occurred on my Tablet PC running Windows XP and IE 7. It completely prevented me from moving on.

This foible is an example of the downside of Microsoft and continued fodder for Apple’s Mac vs. PC commercials. Microsoft forces us into IE, but even IE 7 and Microsoft’s own sites rarely deliver an enjoyable experience.

I still to hope to revisit Office Live at some point, but for now it’s forgettable.

I first learned about WPopac at Corey’s IUG Presentation, “Designing An OPAC for Web 2.0“. As a satisfied new user of WordPress, I was already convinced that somehow it might be a great tool for the library. I certainly wasn’t the first to wonder how and Corey’s work wrapped some flesh around it.

You can experience WPopac at Plymouth State, Corey’s place, and there are more implementations to come.

Who needs WebOPAC software for our catalogs as long as we have access to our data and open source apps like WordPress or Joomla!? The answer, of course, is those of us who are locked into turnkey systems that build walls around our data and then force us to pay for still more software in order to stick some doors into the walls. Change is in the air though, especially as librarians increasingly take to the Web 2.0 meme and begin to expect more from their systems.