Tonight’s server update

Mark Merifield on July 11, 2007 at 2:54 am - 1 Comment

All being well (avoiding any last minute virtual spanners) tonight we’ll complete the last stage of our server upgrade.

For the past two and a half years we’ve been running on Windows servers, the same technology used by the other BMC sites. Although Windows isn’t the native environment on which to run DSpace, it is supported and we’ve done a fair amount of work to improve that support along the way. But now our time with Windows is coming to an end and we’re moving onto a nice shiny newly configured set of Debian Linux servers.

The move is one further aspect of the current re-architecture of the Open Repository service. In bringing the operating system on which we …

Survey Update

Mark Merifield on June 14, 2007 at 11:52 am - 0 Comments

Over the past couple of months we’ve released a couple of customer surveys. Thanks to all of you who have completed them so far. The aim, as I’ve said previously, is to canvas opinion on project support, user features and administration features. Once gathered we’ll use the information gathered to help direct the next stages of development.

We use a nice little piece of web based software for this: Survey Monkey. They’ve recently upgraded the system and as a result all the links have changed. So here are the new locations along with the link to the final administrative survey.

Set up and support survey
User features survey
Administration features survey

Once all the final responses have …

Repositories Research Team Newsletter Out Now

Mark Merifield on June 14, 2007 at 4:28 am - 0 Comments

For those of you who aren’t signed up to the JISC Repositories discussion list the first newsletter from the UKOLN and JISC
CETIS collaborative Repositories Research Team is now available here.

The aim of the newsletter ‘is to provide specialised information
to all those interested in Digital Repositories Research’. This issue links to various acronymonious* pieces on Deposit API and SWORD, Repository Ecology, Dublin Core Application Profile for Scholarly Works and forthcoming events. The team also have a wiki.

Other work the Repositories Research Team are involved in is listed as:

Helping projects find and exploit synergies …

The Google Summer of Code

Mark Merifield on June 5, 2007 at 12:41 pm - 0 Comments

One of the major projects happening within the DSpace community at the moment is the Google Summer of Code; essentially Google sponsor a number of student developers to work on various open source projects over the summer. DSpace have five projects in the running.

Two things we’ve been asked about many times have been the import of citation information from bibliographic reference managers such as EndNote and improved statistics. Both are included within GSOC. That means both import from and export to the most common citation software packages and a vastly improved stats package. In the mean time we’re also looking at rolling out Google Analytics but more of that later.

Another nifty tool looks to be the …

UKCoRR – a group for repository managers by repository managers

Mark Merifield on June 1, 2007 at 4:52 am - 0 Comments

Last Monday saw the inaugural meeting of the United Kingdom Council of Research Repositories at the University of Nottingham. Having wound our way through the convoluted corridors of the Queens Medical Centre, fifty or so repository managers (and me, although I consider myself to be guilty by association) knuckled down to business: to understand matters affecting repository managers and to look at what UKCoRR (pronounced you-core) should be. With everyone relishing the opportunity to be sat in a room of like-minded individuals, lists of issues and concerns flowed forth. Resources, policies, mandates, advocacy, R.A.E., technology, cultural acceptance, K.P.I.s, good practice, required skill sets, user experience… just a few areas for discussion.

UKCoRR will be more than a regular opportunity …

Welcome to the Open Repository blog

Mark Merifield on May 31, 2007 at 12:16 pm - 1 Comment

I spent a little time yesterday brushing up on good blogging techniques and one of the lessons I’ve been reminded of is to keep the titles of posts relevant. I think this one is up to scratch. So welcome to BioMed Central‘s Open Repository blog. It’s good to get started on the right foot.

I recently had a conversation with someone about why we would need a blog for Open Repository (and from now on I’m going to use the shorthand of OR). OR is a strange beast. It is it’s own project that is also bound to developments in the DSpace software community, both of which are tied in to …