DSpace and Fedora join forces

I’m very happy to see an announcement regarding the upcoming collaborative relationship between DSpace and Fedora.

In repository circles, DSpace has the reputation of being relatively easy to get off the ground which has contributed to its popularity,  while Fedora is considered to be more of an investment to assemble and roll out, but has the benefits of increased modularity. I am hoping that this collaboration will bring forward the best of both platforms to the point where it will not matter which product is being used.  We’re all in it for the same reasons after all! 

JISC Moving Images and Sound Archiving Study

I recently gave a lecture about digitization for FIS2308H at the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto.  In the process of preparing my slides I came across a JISC study that I found to be incredibly helpful.  It provided an excellent overview of preservation recommendations for audio and moving images, and described in detail the many different file formats that could be used to store this data.  In addition, it tackled the big question of archiving these types of materials, and even provided a sample recommended minimum metadata set.

Acer Aspire One

I finally had a chance to customize my new Acer Aspire One. It came bundled with only 512 MB of RAM, so I bought another 1 GB (max for this mainboard) to install. I was cautioned by a member of the sales staff at Canada Computers that the installation was not an easy one, and that I should scour YouTube to find a video demonstration.

The staff member was not kidding! This RAM installation was quite a learning experience. I’ve been assembling computers for years, but had never cracked open a laptop before, never mind a sub-notebook. It was very counter intuitive. Screws were hidden under the rubber feet of the laptop. I had to rip them out with a screwdriver, revealing double sided tape. The keyboard then had to be pried out, followed by removing multiple layers to finally reveal the expansion slot which was UNDER the mainboard itself. Tiny delicate clips were everywhere. I must say, after putting the Aspire One back together, I was just glad that it booted up! Luckily everything worked and the extra RAM showed up in the bios. I was unable to find a YouTube video with instructions, but found this post to be a good overview, and this step by step guide was an amazing help.

I also found the following post quite useful for some tips on how to get into the Linpus back end.

Scopus’ friendly seaching interface

If you have not yet had a chance to play with the Scopus interface, its well worth a look.  Through their extensive research, Scopus has made the use of facets approacable and intuitive.  Just like in Erik Hatcher’s Collex platform, users can choose to either limit or exclude multiple facets within specific categories in their searches.

I’m glad that the Scopus folks made it down to demo the service as I had a chance to ask them some questions about their content.  I’m always thinking about how to promote and include the journals that we’re hosting at York through Open Journal Systems software, and so I asked one of the three Scopus representatives about the process involved.  It turns out the there is an on-line form through which one can suggest a title.  Applications are reviewed once per year.  This year’s deadline is September 1st, 2008.  It was disappointing to hear that the rejection rate is 65% because being accessible through this interface would enable Scopus users to more deliberately discover a journal’s content.

Another huge benefit to journals indexed by Scopus is the Journal Analyzer function.  This tool allows a journal to track its citations back to 1996.  The Journal Analyzer also allows users to select up to 10 journals and compare their performance next to each other on the same graph.  This could be a useful visual accompaniment to a grant application.

Web 2.0 concepts

I recently finished reading Key differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. I admit that Web 2.0 was old news over two years ago, but this article provides a good summary of key concepts.  It would be useful to read for those wanting to integrate Web 2.0 concepts into a site design.

A few excerpts:

The article discusses the “balkanization” phenomenon.  Users are more likely to join a particular on-line social network if a critical mass of one’s friends are already members.

Where Web 1.0 started the portalization trend (trying to build features of interest such as weather and news into a site so that users do not need to leave the site), Web 2.0 continues the portalization trend (by providing hosting of users’ photos and videos) but relies on users to bring the content.

In Web 2.0, the “trend is towards an increasingly customize front page so that no two users have the same experience.”

Brand names and Open Access

I was reading Peter Suber’s July 08 Open Access Newsletter, and its enough to make my head spin…there are so many developments posted on Open Access News I just can’t keep up anymore, its fantastic that “hot” stories are now tagged and the feed to these stories can be subscribed to here.

I was struck by a particular point Peter raised:  that the availability of funds to pay for access [to research] does not scale to keep pace with the growth of published knowledge.

It made me think about the format problem.  I’ve been hearing it mentioned over and over again, this question: why are we so attached to packaging our research into a journal format?

Is it the brand name that we’re so attached to?  If we’re looking for quality, do we simply just seek out the Prada of journals?  Does not the research stand up for itself, just like a consumer good has to? If your Vuitton luggage falls apart after one trip down the baggage conveyor belt, does the fancy brand matter anymore?

Maybe its about lack of time.  Who has the time to compare quality of consumer goods…we’ve all purchased a generic brand at one point or another that greatly underperformed. To protect against that disappointment, its just easier to pay a little more for the name brand version.  Perhaps we adopt a similar mentality with research?

This worries me a bit.  The fact that research output volumes are multiplying so quickly…is it not in a way working against the cause?…is it not further fueling the demand for these high impact journals to exist? Is it not so much easier to simply save time by trusting the name brand research?

In my mind, the solution lies in the metrics…where citations and downloads can be measured and compared to the opinions of the elite groups of peer reviewers that decide which articles are Vuittons and which are simply generic.   I can’t help but predict that once a more unified and unprejudiced method of tracking impact appears, brand names just won’t matter.  The quality of an item of research will simply stand up for itself, visible for all to see, no longer in need of being sold under a designer label.