Greetings.
I wanted to comment on current work here at MIT to provide MIT's
OpenCourseWare with DSpace as a "repository back-end," at least in
one sense of that phrase. (phrase used in initial thread query, re:
Railroad Repository as "repository back-end" to a CMS like Plone-
based EduCommons, or similar).
First, for our purposes, DSpace is perhaps better described as a
"digital archive back-end," in the sense that OCW content is, well,
archived there :) --sent to a peer application (DSpace), via Web
Services, for the archival services it can provide (preservation,
persistent address, OAI-PMH, SRW, etc.).
Contrast that with the popular use of the word "repository" as more
of a component in the architectural stack of one application (CMS or
LMS). (My take on Railroad is it fits this description.) Herein,
among other issues, multiple versioning of materials is often an
important requirement, which is not so much a strong suit for a
digital archive like DSpace.
So with that distinction in mind (subject of a fair amount of
discussion at the recent Sakai conference in Vancouver), some comments.
As John pointed out, MIT's OpenCourseWare has developed an in-house
customization of Microsoft's Content Management System, including its
use of SQL Server for its db.
In the interest of interoperability, that system has been extended
over the past year to author standard IMS Content Packages--one per
OCW course--, to the specifications of an application profile
developed on the CWSpace project, "Archiving OCW to DSpace."
MIT OCW now benefits from the use of that single standard .ZIP
package to not only archive their unpublished courses into DSpace,
but also for exchange of their content with other educational
partners and translation partners, for faculty dissemination, and for
convenient course downloads from their site to end users, many of
whom will simply unzip and view the course website, but some of whom
may well load the IMS-CP into a tool like RELOAD to re-fashion and re-
purpose the course content.
The DSpace platform, in the course of the same CWSpace project, has
developed new functionality useful to working with learning objects
and learning management systems. These include a Plugin
Architecture; Packager Plugins; Crosswalk Plugins; Multiple Metadata
Support; and finally a Web Services interface called the "Lightweight
Network Interface" (LNI).
Together, these capabilities permit an educational content provider
to prepare learning objects or courseware websites into a content
package (IMS usually, but METS is available), accompanied by LOM (or
other descriptive metadata, e.g. MODS, etc.), and to programmatically
submit the package to DSpace remotely.
[Another Web Services area of active development is to access (read
only) DSpace remotely using an OKI OSID DR, talking to DSpace's SRW.
This is being employed in an EdTech application here at MIT, "Stellar
Image Tool" (will also be a Sakai tool).]
Once in DSpace, as you know, OAI-PMH, SRW, RSS are available. But
as a complete "LOR," I'd have to say John's remarks comparing
DSpace's U/I with the features of IntraLibrary and EduCommons remain
germane, as well as those concerning Plone and scalability.
The "Multiple Metadata Support" use of DSpace for using other than
"crosswalked down" Qualified Dublin Core is still quite, quite new,
but on the CWSpace project we are exploring the use of both the LOM
as received, plus a subset of LOM metadata fields crosswalked to DC.
[At a minimum, if not truly integrated into DSpace's metadata tables,
the LOM or other metadata received can always be stored as a
bitstream for future processing.]
Finally, the status of this project and its code is that it runs with
DSpace 1.4 (in beta very shortly), and will be complete by the end of
this summer.
Best regards,
William Reilly
Technical Analyst
MIT Libraries' Digital Library Research Group (DLRG)
Project Manager, CWSpace
"Archiving MIT's OpenCourseWare in DSpace"
http://cwspace.mit.edu/
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>Date: Sat, 10 Jun 2006 12:58:37 +0100
>Reply-To: John Norman <[log in to unmask]>
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>From: John Norman <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: Railroad Repository and Educommons
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>Unless things have changed recently, MIT Open CourseWare is not using
>Educommons. Rather, Educommons was created by Ohio State (?) to offer
>a service comparable to MIT OCW. I believe MIT OCW is custom code
>based on MS Content Management Server.
>
>I also believe some places have extended DSpace metadata to include
>Learning Object Metadata, at which point it becomes a learning object
>repository, but without all of the features of Intralibrary or all of
>the published web interface features of Educommons and MIT OCW.
>
>Finally, our very limited experience with Plone is that it may not
>scale well beyond 2,000 or so users. I hope someone will correct me
>if I have that wrong.
>
>John
>
>On 9 Jun 2006, at 15:50, Melanie Bates wrote:
>
>>Dear colleagues,
>>
>>Has anyone had experience of the open source 'Railroad
>>Repository' ( http://infrae.com/products/railroad ) software and
>>associated 'Plone' ( http://plone.org ) CMS, of which educommons
>>(http://plone.org/products/educommons) is an Add-on? We have
>>dSpace as our Institutional Repository and would ideally like to
>>use an OAI-PMH compatible repository for our teaching and learning
>>content too. The 'Educommons', which is the system that MIT use
>>for their Open Courseware Initiative, seems to be a good delivery
>>platform but does anyone have any experience of using it with a
>>repository back end? Railroad seems to tick all the boxes, but
>>it's the first time I've come across it?
>>
>>Any experience people have of any of these things would be great to
>>know about.
>>
>>Many thanks,
>>
>>Melanie
>>
>>--
>>Melanie Bates
>>Learning Technology Co-ordinator
>>engCETL
>>Loughborough University
>>--
>>Rights and Rewards project
>>http://rightsandrewards.lboro.ac.uk
-------------------------------------------------------------
William Reilly
-----
Technical Analyst Digital Library Research Group
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Bldg. E25-131
77 Massachusetts Avenue wreilly at mit . edu
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 U.S.A. +1 (617) 253-5716
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