I've thought for a long time that repositories should make use of
Subversion or similar, though obviously old versions of bitstreams might
need to be accessible in some cases and embargoed in others, the same as
current ones. Old versions of metadata could be treated in the same way,
though they could presumably be in a publicly visible history and would
rarely need to be suppressed by administrators in the same way. This
would answer preservation and version management issues quite well.
Mind you, I also think that repositories should be more collaborative
spaces than they are at present (answering "why can't I alter my own
items?"), albeit with a mechanism for all changes to be monitored by
administrators responsible for copyyright checking. At present that
checking only happens in the submission workflow, not in the longer-term
management of the repository in the same way. Users are often put off
engaging in the keystrokes because they don't have control over their
own stuff, and are after all responsible employees.
Talat
Chris Rusbridge wrote:
> My earlier note about how the R word was mostly being used for
> something else, and in particular for source code version control
> repositories, has been swirling around in the back of my brain for a
> few days, bumping into other stuff. In particular, I began to wonder
> whether there are elements of the typical source code repository that
> we could usefully use for our repositories. Now this thought is
> neither new nor original; I remember commenting in a blog post in
> August last year on Peter Murray-Rust's epiphany from April 2007
> (http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/blogs/murrayrust/?p=259) that SourceForge
> was a repository. But I don't think I've seen the ideas contrasted
> yet, say in the context of what IRs could usefully take from source
> code repositories.
>
> A lot of what goes into source code repositories is about managing
> change: keeping track of versions, and ensuring that separate people
> are not changing the same element at the same time. There are also
> presumably sophisticated facilities for constructing what one might
> call derivative products (compiled versions, libraries, etc; it's a
> long time since I used one of these things in production!).
>
> IRs and related repositories have traditionally not been about change;
> they tend to be about maintaining a static version (I won't say
> "preserving", as it appears some object to that idea). However, the
> idea of moving the repository upstream into the researcher's workflow,
> as in the idea of a Research Repository System (eg
> http://digitalcuration.blogspot.com/2008/07/negative-click-positive-value-research.html).
> This does imply managing change much more. Besides, we're beginning to
> be troubled by multiple version problems, and we certainly have
> derivative products (from simple Word -> PDF transformations, to more
> unclear pre-print -> post-print relationships).
>
> So my question is: has this comparison of IR platforms to source code
> repository systems been done, or is anyone doing it?
>
> --
> Chris Rusbridge
> Director, Digital Curation Centre
> Email: [log in to unmask] Phone 0131 6513823
> University of Edinburgh
> Appleton Tower, Crichton St, Edinburgh EH8 9LE
>
> The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
> Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
>
>
>
> On 10 Mar 2009, at 17:44, Chris Rusbridge wrote:
>
>> I have [a twitter search] for "Repository OR Repositories". I just
>> did a quick count; with around 160 tweets found in the past 2 days
>> containing one of those words, only 14 had anything to do with the
>> sort of repositories this list is interested in!
>>>
>>
>> Most of the rest appear to be to do with SVN and git etc version
>> control repositories. Quite a lot appear to be the simple dictionary
>> meaning of places to store something.
>>
>> I hadn't quite realised how much we are overloading someone else's
>> vocabulary with the R-word!
--
Dr Talat Chaudhri
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