Questions below emerged as Judy and Liza were uploading some resources in December 2006.

"Hopefully these answers make sense. Good questions all. Keep them coming. I need to improve the documentation for the system and so these questions are useful in guiding that effort. Let me know if you have more or any other difficulties. Cheers, Scott"

Q. SEARCHABILITY What fields are being searched when you search from the Search box?

A. Title, description, keyword, subject classification levels 1 and 2, media type, OPDF Round, OPDF Project Name, BC Program and Course Name, Contributing Institution Name, Author Name

Q. SEARCHABILITY It looks as if the keywords are searchable - more than one word at a time?

A. Yes, you can combine search terms as in "cat AND dog." The advanced search in version 3 will be much better.

Q. KEYWORDS: We noticed that the keywords aren't visible after the item has been uploaded. So, we couldn't look at material Patti Romanko had posted to see what keywords she had used. If we could see the whole record including keywords it could be useful in aiming at any sort of consistency.

A. This is an artefact of the current version and will be fixed in the (I promise, soon) 3.0 release I am working on. The keywords will show up in records and automatically link to searches on that keyword.

Q. INSTITUTION: Where do we put in the institution affiliation? We thought maybe it came from our email address but what we uploaded doesn't come up when searching by institution.

A. We should figure out how to deal with this. Right now, I am the one who adds institutional identifier data as part of the moderation workflow. This was an arbitrary decision made by BCcampus to circumvent any squabbles that might arise in OPDF projects. But it doesn't deal well with non-OPDF

submissions.

Let me think on this one. For now I will go in and moderate the existing submissions with institutional data. I can change the workflow in our 3.0 roll-out but I have to think what to change it to.

Q. FORMAT: We have an item for submission:that was created using Captiva, viewed using Flash and uploaded as a zip file. What do we put for Technical format?

A. Me, I would use Flash, as this is ultimately what is needed to view the item. The LOM spec says things can't have multiple technical formats, so it's not me asserting this. It is an optional field.

(see below too

Q. MULTIPLE FORMATS: Can we upload a resource in multiple formats? i.e. .pdf and .html and .doc?

A. To do this, zip them up, and then once the zip is uploaded, use the 'Choose Files' button on the file upload page to select the various versions. This also gives you a chance to name the individual files (it will default to their file name) and so you could indicate there the different formats.

Q. OWNERSHIP: Is this field for editing rights to the metadata?

A. Yes, this is about owning the object in SOL*R, not about rights to view it.

Q. OWNERSHIP: Can we add names to shared ownership at a later date?

A. Yes. But to do this (or to make any edits at all once something has been submitted) means creating a 'New Version.' This isn't as bad as it sounds. On the left click on 'View / Edit My Items.' This list all of the items for which you have ownership. Click on 'All' to list all your submissions. When you find the item you want to change, click 'Modify.' The 'New Version.' This will open up the metadata creation wizard, but all of your original values and file uploads will be there. At this point you can either make an edit or share the ownership with others. At the end, save the item again. If you think about it this actually makes some sense - we are versioning both the metadata and the items, and any edit, even just to add a new owner, is changing the metadata and so necessitates a new version. I expect I need to both document that better and make it more obvious for folks.

Q. DELETING:To delete a record entirely do we have to get in touch with you?

A. Similar to the above situation with edits; we don't actually delete anything, instead what we do is 'Suspend' it. To do this view all your items, find the one you want to suspend, hit modify and then "Suspend." This will no longer be available to people (but can be later unsuspended and put back into circulation.

Q. LEVEL: (a note for the future?) We did not indicate the academic level because it would be "all" or "any".

A. It's an optional field. Just leave it blank.

More FAQs

Q. Is it technically possible for authors to replace their own work with a newest version and 2) are there any guidelines we should be suggesting?

Katherine

A. It is actually quite easy to go in an edit a record in SOLR. You can delete the old version, add the new one, and edit the metadata

accordingly. A note to the effect that this is a new version would be helpful. This is what I would recommend, in case people are using the

URL to the original. You can also leave the older version there, and attach a new one.

It is hard to say whether leaving older materials there is a good thing or not - pros and cons each way. I think there is no problem

with being flexible in the short term, and coming up with guidelines at a later date, maybe even a year or two down the road when we all have more experience with this.

Heather

Q. What's the best practice for uploading AV tutorials created with software such as Captivate? In my understanding, the final product is a Flash file, but if you want someone to be able to edit and adapt you need to give them the raw Captivate working file(s) too. SOLR is happy to accept multiple files for one "object"; will it happily accept the Captivate file as some kind of data stream even if it doesn't understand the file extension? Gordon

A. The best approach, in my mind, would be

a) create a zip which contains all the compiled media for the flash, as well as an HTML file to embed it in (this is a default setting on most screen capture apps)

b) if you want to include the raw files, then open the zip and add these in there too

c) when you upload it, choose "Zip file (multi-file standalone sites)." You can then "Select files within the zip" or "Choose files" and choose the HTML file. This will create an immediately previewable version of the flash movie that can also be directly linked to.

d) either in a text file also included in the zip, or in the metadata (say in the description) you could indicate the source file for the flash movie was also in the zip, and to simply download and edit it if anyone wants to make a change.

Does this make sense? It is, in my opinion, the easiest way to do this; it is what you would normally do to server a multi-file flash movie, and it simply adds the source file to the main distribution zip file.

Scott