Symplectic - Eprints link testing underway

The University of Leeds purchased the Symplectic Publiction Management System last year; it has been live at the University since Oct 2008. The University Library is currently working with developers at Symplectic to put in place an effective link between the University of Leeds' Symplectic installation (sometimes known as TULIP but most people at Leeds simply refer to 'Symplectic' or 'the publications database') and White Rose Research Online. Once the link is in place, it is envisaged that the main - probably exclusive - route for Leeds' White Rose content will be Symplectic. Symplectic regularly searches for new publications by Leeds authors and sends an email alert to them when something new has been harvested. It is straightforward for the author (or someone designated to work on their behalf) to click on a button to accept or reject the publication. Once the EPrints Symplectic link is in place, it will also be straightforward to upload the full text of the work at the same time. It is also possible to add new publications to the Symplectic system manually - clearly, not all publications are indexed in the searched sources (currently Web of Science and PubMed). Again, depositors will be able to upload the full text of their work at the same time as the entry is created in Symplectic.

Once the work is deposited, it will automatically enter the White Rose Research Online workflow, where the attached file's copyright status will be checked. White Rose will supply a White Rose Research Online URL for the work which will be included in the Symplectic record. Some departments use the Symplectic data to produce publication lists for their web pages; once the EPrints Symplectic link is established, these pages will include a link to the open access text within White Rose Research Online.

Publish Post

If testing goes to plan, we hope that the link will be implemented in late September 2009. One step further to creating and depositing items once for multiple purposes!

I'm very interested to discuss developments with anyone interested in repository/research systems links - especially if you use EPrints and/or Symplectic (Rachel Proudfoot eprints@whiterose.ac.uk).

Repositories Exchange of Experience - Universities of York and Leeds

An interesting meeting took place on Friday between various library staff who work on "repositories" at the Universities of York and Leeds. University of York is developing a digital library - using Fedora with a Muradora front end - to manage a variety of digital content - including, for example, a collection of images from the History of Art Department (some already digitised, others which will need to be scanned). Leeds has a multimedia repository running on the Digitool platform - originally created as part of the MIDESS project and now continuing as LUDOS (Leeds University Digital Objects) . LUDOS collections include Medieval Manuscripts and images of Physics Instruments. It will also house longitudinal qualitative data from the ESRC funded Timescapes project.

There is significant overlap between the target content for the York Digital Library and LUDOS.

Both the LUDOS and York Digital Library act as a complement to Leeds' and York's VLE systems and to the shared (Leeds, Sheffield, York) repository for research outputs - White Rose Research Online (EPrints software).

Repository development can be a lonely business sometimes! It's good to get in touch with other people who are working through very similar issues. Some of the common ground identified at the meeting:

• access control : for legal reasons - but also may wish to restrict access to the metadata of non OA items in some cases.
• metadata - York is investigating VRA Core for images; Leeds decided against this standard, preferring MODS because it enables nested relationships. Potentially, much fruitful sharing of exerience to be had here.
• data input - repository workflows need to be able to cater for expert and non-expert inputters
• authentication - we need it!
• relationships between digital objects
• to customise or not to customise? - software may be flexible enough to allow lots of tailoring - but future migration should always be considered
• ingestion of really big files! Should large files be referenced elsewhere e.g. vidoes might live on a streaming server.
• multiple copies of files - if usage data is important, how to we aggregate statistics?
• trust and creditials between repository systems - for sharing data
• metasearch tools from OPAC - various tools were discussed. York and Leeds have similar interests - it would be very useful to share data on this.
• how comprehensive should metasearching be?
• embedded (human!) behaviour - how to change it?
• desktop deposit - what will it look like and is mediation always necessary?

We also had a couple of brief presentations on SWORD - Simple Web-service Offering Repository Deposit- by Julie and John. We're looking at SWORD as a potential deposit mechanism for to populate both WRRO and ESRC's Social Sciences repository. See the IncReASe project. It would also be interesting to look into desktop deposit using SWORD e.g. as used in the experimental Microsoft eJournal Service.

Attending:
York: Julie Allinson, Peri Stracchino, Ellizabeth Harbord, Yankui Feng, Matthew Herring, Lucy Jaques
Leeds: Jonathan Ainsworth, Michael Emly, John Salter
White Rose: Rachel Proudfoot, Beccy Shipman, John Salter, Lucy Jaques

This was a useful meeting - and raised lots of issues which there was not time to address in great detail on the day. It was agreed to have another exchange meeting in about 6 months' time.