Browsing by Author "Mikeal, Adam"
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Item Developing a Common Submission System for ETDs in the Texas Digital Library(2007-05-30) Mikeal, Adam; Brace, Tim; Texas A&M University; University of Texas at AustinThe Texas Digital Library (TDL) is a consortium of universities organized to provide a single digital infrastructure for the scholarly activities of Texas universities. The four current Association of Research Libraries (ARL) universities and their systems comprise more than 40 campuses, 375,000 students, 30,000 faculty, and 100,000 staff; while non-ARL institutions represent another sizable addition in both students and faculty. TDL's principal collection is currently its federated collection of ETDs from three of the major institutions; The University of Texas, Texas A&M University, and Texas Tech University. Since the ARL institutions in Texas alone produce over 4,000 ETDs per year, the growth potential for a single state-wide repository is significant. To facilitate the creation of this federated collection, the schools agreed upon a common metadata standard represented by a MODS XML schema. Although this creates a baseline for metadata consistency, there exists ambiguity within the interpretation of the schema that creates usability and interoperability challenges. Name resolution issues are not addressed by the schema, and certain descriptive metadata elements need consistency in format and level of significance so that common repository functionality will operate intuitively across the collection. It was determined that a common ingestion point for ETDs was needed to collect metadata in a consistent, authoritative manner. A working group was formed that consisted of representatives from five universities, and a state-wide survey of the state of ETDs was conducted, with varied levels of engagement with ETDs reported. Many issues were identified, including policy questions such as open access publishing, copyright considerations and the collection of release authorizations, the role of infrastructure development such as a Shibboleth federation for authentication, and interoperability with third-party publishers such as UMI. ETD workflows at six schools were analyzed, and a meta-workflow was identified with three stages: ingest, verification, and publication. It was decided that Shibboleth would be used for authentication and identity management within the application. This paper reports on the results of the survey, and describes the system and submission workflow that was developed as a consequence. A functional prototype of the ingest stage has been built, and a full prototype with Shibboleth integration is slated for completion in June of 2007. Demonstrators of the application are expected to be deployed in fall of 2007 at three schools.Item Manakin Architecture: Understanding Modularity in Manakin(2007-05-30) Phillips, Scott; Green, Cody; Maslov, Alexey; Mikeal, Adam; Leggett, John; Texas A&M UniversityManakin is the second release of the DSpace XML UI project. Manakin introduces a modular interface layer, enabling an institution to easily customize DSpace according to the specific needs of a particular repository, community, or collection. Manakin’s modular architecture enables developers to add new features to the system without affecting existing functionality. This presentation will introduce Manakin’s modular architecture from a technical perspective, with an emphasis on extending Manakin’s feature set to meet local needs. First the project’s goals will be introduced, followed by a discussion of Manakin’s relationship with DSpace. Next an architectural overview of the primary components will be given: • DRI: The Digital Repository Interface (DRI) is an XML schema defining a language that allows aspects and themes to communicate. Manakin uses DRI as the abstraction layer between the repository’s business logic and presentation. The schema is adapted for digital repositories through the use of embedded METS-based metadata packages. • Aspects: Manakin aspects are components that provide features for the digital repository. These modular components can be added, removed, or replaced through simple configuration changes, enabling Manakin’s features to be extended to meet the needs of specific repositories. Aspects are linked together forming an “aspect chain”. This chain defines the set of features of a particular repository. • Themes: Manakin themes stylize the look-and-feel of the repository, community, or collection. The modular characteristics of themes enable them to encapsulate all the resources necessary to create a unique look-and-feel into one package. Themes may be configured to apply to a range of objects, from an entire repository down to a single page. Finally the presentation will close with a walkthrough of the Manakin architecture detailing how these components work together to form the Manakin framework.Item A Manakin Case Study Visualizing geospatial metadata and complex items(2007-05-30) Maslov, Alexey; Green, Cody; Mikeal, Adam; Phillips, Scott; Weimer, Kathy; Leggett, John; Texas A&M UniversityIncreasingly, repositories are responsible for preserving complex items, and items with specific/unique metadata, such as geospatial metadata. These collections present unique challenges for the repository interface, and traditional approaches often fail to provide adequate visualization mechanisms. This presentation is a case study of a particular collection that exhibits a Manakin solution to both of these challenges. The Geologic Atlas of the United States is a series of 227 folios published by the USGS between 1894 and 1945. Each folio consists of 10 to 40 pages of mixed content -- including maps, text, and photographs -- with an emphasis on the natural features and economic geology of the coverage area. Complex Items: The current visualization model in DSpace offers a cumbersome browsing experience for complex items, as the default item view in DSpace is not optimized for items that contain more than a few bitstreams. The logical organization of the folio collection was as a single DSpace collection with 227 items, where each item contained multiple bitstreams representing each page of the folio. The result was an uninformative list of filenames, each linking to a very large (approximately 100 MB) image file. Manakin allowed us to create a new detail view for the folio items using an image gallery-style viewing interface. This new view has thumbnails for each page and lower-resolution surrogates for screen viewing. It also allows a viewer to download either the full archival-quality TIFF or a reduced-quality JPEG. The combination of thumbnail surrogates and the ability to see all pages of a folio at once serves to increase the ease with which the collection is navigated and understood. Unique Metadata: The current DSpace interface is unable to leverage the potential of atypical metadata, such as the geospatial metadata attached to the folio collection. Although geographic elements were added to the DSpace metadata registry following Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) recommendations, the only visualization mechanism DSpace could offer was a flat listing of the metadata values. Manakin allowed us to exploit the unique geospatial properties of the folio collection. It was determined that a map-based interface for browsing and searching would help a user to quickly determine the coverage area of a particular folio visually, as well as place the title in its geographic context. Both of the challenges presented by this case study could have been addressed using the existing JSP interface. However, the awkward nature of such an implementation would be impractical to create and maintain; furthermore, no mechanism exists to restrict such changes to an individual collection. Manakin's modular architecture made the creation of this interface achievable by a small team in a matter of days. Currently, the interface is available online at http://handle.tamu.edu/1969.1/2490, and has been featured as an Editor's Pick on Yahoo.com for its use of the Yahoo! Maps API.