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Morning folks Following on from Nick's comments, here at Oxford Brookes, we have been working on a "blended" repository of research outputs and learning objects, and have been trailling Intralibrary and Equella (the final report for this JISC project will be out later this year). It's certainly a challenge to find *any* software that will satisy multiple stakeholders - it reminds me of someone buying a car: yes, it needs to be fuel efficient, and room for the kids, and good performance, and light, but sturdy enough for safety reasons...oh and by the way it needs to be the right colour (corpoarate branding anyone!). My point being that as repository administrators we should not beat ourselves up about how our systems fail to achieve a few requirements. No software is perfect, and it's just a question of finding something that fulfills the main objectives first. Steve Burholt -- *Steve Burholt** *E-learning Systems Developer Media Workshop Oxford Brookes University Tel. 01865 484424 Any views or opinions expressed in this email are my own. > >I wouldn't use DSpace, or any other repository designed > specifically for scholarly > >materials, to store, catalogue and serve e-learning resources, and I > >wouldn't use Intralibrary, for example, for scholarly works. > > I would be the first to recognise that intraLibrary isn't ideally > suited to be used as an Open Access repository, however, with some > "customisation" it can do the job. It comes back to my initial point > about institutional expectations of their repositories to manage a > wide range of digital material and the practical implications of > this. It was clear at the RSP focus group that repository > administrators running a range of platforms are increasingly being > expected by to manage everything and the kitchen sink. > > 2009/1/26 Leslie Carr <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> > > On 26 Jan 2009, at 17:24, Fred Riley wrote: > > <shrug> Theory's one thing, practice is another. > > > Absolutely. I'm with you right there. > But rhetoric is a third thing, and the two communities are pretty > much divided by their rhetoric. > > > At a high level of > abstraction I'm sure you're right, but on a practical level I > wouldn't > use DSpace, or any other repository designed specifically for > scholarly > materials, to store, catalogue and serve e-learning resources, > and I > wouldn't use Intralibrary, for example, for scholarly works. > > How could you convince me? What could you show me or tell me that > would help me understand? > > > And I'm > afraid that this techie operates very much at the mundane, > practical > level, which is why I'd like to see a forum where practical > learning > materials repository issues can be thrashed out. > > Like copyright, sharing, packaging, versioning, metadata? > > > I'm a database developer, amongst other things, and I wouldn't > describe > a completely different database schema as "just customisation", > > I'm a systemn developer and I would! That's rather the point of a > database - it';s a generic data handler and it doesn't need to be > different just because you're using a different schema. > > > and for > sure the database design I'd come up with for publications > would be very > different from that for e-learning materials. > > But some of it would be in common. After all, learning objects > have bibliographic properties. And some repository software > packages make great store of being able to store and manage > whatever metadata you throw at them. > > > Again, at a high level of abstraction all > repositories are but instances of the same ideal > meta-repository, an > 'abstract class' perhaps, but then at a high level of > abstraction we > might be just programs running in a universe-wide quantum > computer ;-) > > I don't think we need to scale quite such extreme levels of > abstraction to find some system commonality and identify > specialisations. > -- > Les > > -- *Steve Burholt** *E-learning Systems Developer Media Workshop Oxford Brookes University Tel. 01865 484424 Any views or opinions expressed in this email are my own.