Choosing a Digital Repository

What do we call It?

• Digital Asset Management System (DAMS)
• Institutional Repository (IR)
• Repository Software
• Content Management System (CMS)
• Digital Library
• Data repository
• Electronic records systems
 Who are your Audience/Users?
• General public
• Institutional
– Support history and mission of your employer: University
Archives, Corporation, Government, Non-profit
• Museum
• Collecting archives
• Library
• Research or lab
• Learning Objects (educators)
• Data repository (beyond scope of class)
 Scholars
• A digital library to publish an essay or digital
dissertation, share primary source collections,
and collaborate with others in the creation of
digital scholarship.
 Museums
• Use digital library to share collections and
build online exhibits with objects you cannot
display in the museum. Invite your visitors to
tag and mark items as favorites, or to
contribute content. Start a blog to publish
museum news and podcasts.
 Librarians
• Use a digital library as the publishing tool to
complement your online catalog or launch a
digital exhibit.
• Academic librarians may publish open access
research publications and data
 Archivists
• Use a digital library to share your collections,
display documents and oral histories.
• Preserve fragile materials
• Rare or valuable item can be viewed with
greater eases.
 Educators
• Use a digital library to build inquiry-based
tasks for students, to create lesson plans with
accompanying primary sources, or build
learning modules with your team.
 Special Interest/Enthusiasts
• Use a digital library to share you personal
research or collections with the world, build
exhibits and write essays that showcase your
expertise.
 What Assets do you Own?
• What kind of objects do you want to store?
– Photographs
– Text documents
– Databases
– Movies
– Audio
– Web pages
– Newspapers
– Data
• Your assets may dictate what system you choose
 Use Cases or Stakeholders
• Types of material may dictate the software
you choose
• User’s expectations
– Branding, mobile,
• Sensitive and restricted data
• Does the software need to integrate with
enterprise applications
• Self submission or highly curated
 Features/Ad-Ons
• Can come already installed or be installed as
plugins, as needed basis
• Examples
– Bulk uploaded
– CSV
– Omeka’s Plugins
https://omeka.org/add-ons/plugins/
Metadata/Vocabularies/Authorities
• What comes with it?:
– Dublin Core
– Thesauri
– Metadata customizable?
– Can you add your own
Platforms Optimized for Specific Purposes or
Users
• Example we can place ContentDM and DSpace
on opposite ends of spectrum
Less curation, self Highly curated, no self
submission, more submission, rich user
utilitarian, once size fits all. experience
 DSpace
• Digital repository designed to allow scholars to
share academic research
• Turnkey solution or “repository in a box”
• Open Source
• Dublin Core metadata
• Workflows that allow levels of administration
from library to scholar
• Allows for “self submission” by scholar
 ContentDM
• Very library “biased”
• Not very good at IR functions
• Costly, but lots of functionality
• Many institutions using
• OCLC, will be around for awhile
• Hosted or custom installed
• Aging code base, so unlikely to see massive changes
• Lock-in
 Omeka
• Swahili word meaning “to display or layout
goods or wares; to speak out; to spread out;
to unpack.
• Open source digital library
• Developed by the late, Roy Rosenzweig at
George Mason University
• Uses Dublin Core
• Like Wordpress for exhibits and collections
 Administrator and User Roles
• Does the application allow for assigning
“roles” within the software?
– User
– Cataloger
– Administrator
– Student
– Assistant
• Can it be integrated to a directory service, like
Active Directory, LDAP or Shibboleth
 File types/Asset Types
• What files can you upload into the system?
– Audio
– Newspapers/Books
– Video
– Images
• File Types
– Tiff, Mov, Wav, Jpeg2000
 Some Key Questions to Ask
• What is your institutions long-term financial
commitment to the digital library?
• What are your resources in staffing and
technology?
• Is grant funded or line item in your yearly
budget?
• What is the size of your collection?
• Will the software scale?
 Hosted DL
• Hosted pushes technical oversight to vendor
• Great for small institutions and big, too
• Monthly or yearly fee, usually more costly
• Lots of coordination
– Phone calls and email
– Tickets
• Can’t customize, and if so, additional costs
• Untimely downtime
• The costs are more upfront
 Locally Administered DL
• Requires robust technology environment
• Usually one dedicated web or server
administrator
• Allows for most customization
– Branding or look and feel
– Integrate with other systems
• Usually less yearly expense
• Can hire technology consultant for install and
upgrades
 Consortia Approach to DL
• Inexpensive approach to entering the DL game
• Technical help from consortia
• Not a lot of customizations options
• Updating the collection or configuration may require a
lot of coordination
• Collections might get more exposures, but at the same
time lost with competing collections.
• A few examples:
– NY Heritage
– California Digital Library
– Ohio Digital Library
– Minnesota Digital Library
 Open Source vs. Proprietary
• The term open source, “source” refers to
source code, the human-readable computer
code which is the origin, or source, of the
computer application. Open refers to the
terms of access to that computer source code.
So open source software is software for which
the source code is open for inspection,
changing, customization
 Advantages of Open Source
• Access to source code and ability and right to
modify it
• Right to redistribute modifications to benefit
wider community
• Free (not always)
• Excellent support networks
• Large and enthusiastic user base
• Disadvantages
– Limited or no accountability
– Informal and unaccountable support channels
 Types of Open Source
• Operating System
– Linux,
• Server software
– Apache, Tomcat,
• Programming Language
– PHP, Perl,
• Building blocks
– ImageMagick, LibXML, LibXSLT, Saxon, Blacklight,
Solr
 Proprietary or Fee-based DL’s
• ContentDM (OCLC)
• LUNA Insight
• Digital Commons (Bpress)
• Past Perfect
• DigiTool (Ex Libris)

***Only to name a few!***

 Open Source DL’s
• Fedora Commons
– Hydra
– Islandora
• Dspace
• ePrints
• Greenstone
• Omeka
 Turnkey
• Up in running quickly
• Tried and true UI and settings, but can become
outdated
• Less expertise and money
• May not match look and feel of website
• Lowest common denominator
• Can’t customize, especially if it is proprietary
• Difficult to experiment
• High dissatisfaction over time
 Customized
• Customized
• Most likely to meet you and your user’s needs
• What most want, but not always practical
• Up front investment in time and money
• Potentially costly
• Customized settings, means each upgrade more
times consuming, thus costly and risky to manage
over time