MLIS 7505 Assignment Four

Rhiannon Shoults-Wilson
MLIS 7505
Dr. Fatih Oguz
9 June 2009

Assignment Four

I went to our DSpace implementation and clicked on My DSpace, which allowed me to create an account, which was very simple. After I was given administrative privileges, I created my community. The technical side of this was very simple, though I wish there was more input on the site regarding the content. For instance, when creating or editing the community, there is the option to add "sidebar text," but no description of what type of information should go there, or how it should be different from the "short description" or the "introductory text."

I next created a collection within my community, which I decided would house a couple of works I'm considering for my MLIS portfolio.

I visited the metadata registry and added a new field, dc.title.shoults-wilson. I then emailed Larry and had him add the field to the input form and make it indexable. After that had been done, I uploaded a couple of files - a paper from my cataloging class and a pathfinder I created for my reference class. I input information into the fields, including the "Shoults-Wilson title" field. I used this field to indicate what class and project the document belonged to, e.g. "MLIS 7100 Pathfinder." The input was very intuitive, though it relied on the user having an understanding of the metadata elements. If I were to implement this system for end users to upload their own documents, I would want the ability to link to style guides and information about what is required for each metadata field.

After I had uploaded my documents, I received emails telling me my submissions had been accepted. The emails also included a Handle System permanent identifier, which did not work (I would assume this is because we don't have the service set up for our test installation). Sending this permanent URI to the document owner is a very useful tool.

I went to the advanced search, and searched Title for MLIS. This brought up both of my documents, because I had included this term in the "Shoults-Wilson title" field, though it wasn't in the displayed title.

From my experiences here, I feel like DSpace is a potentially powerful tool for libraries and their digital collections, though it would require a lot of time to grasp all of the available features, and I think a lot of customization would be required to make a useable repository for community users to upload and modify (as opposed to librarians). I know that is what DSpace was designed for, and it's interesting to see how libraries are implementing that. One such is IDEALS, the repository for faculty, staff, and graduate student research at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. They have customized their installation, created lots of help documentation, and have a final review process by librarians, and this allows community members to upload their own documents using DSpace, saving a lot of staff time. This illustrates what a great tool this can be!

URLs Created:
My Community: http://mlis.library.gatech.edu/handle/123456789/32
My Collection: http://mlis.library.gatech.edu/handle/123456789/33
My Cataloging Paper: http://mlis.library.gatech.edu/handle/123456789/99
My Pathfinder: http://mlis.library.gatech.edu/handle/123456789/100