[Update: We seem to be moving forward with SOL*R. I'm not going update this page much more.]
Kind of a dog's breakfast of ideas about what a repository could/should have ...
I'm starting with "Features for Searchability" because it seems key; after all, we are supposed to be "user-centred"! It seems the key issue is making this resource compelling enough that users (i.e. librarians) will come here. Once they've found the site useful, it's only a short step until they're posting their own material.
Feature | Priority | SOLR | ANTS | CORIL |
- | - | - | - | - |
Features for Searchability | - | - | - | - |
Guest vs. Authenticated Search | ?? | Unless you log in, the default search shows only objects with a Creative Commons license. This is Not Good, in my opinion. Forcing users to have a password in order to see the "good stuff" is quite a hurdle to get them across. Unless all our objects have the CC license, of course. | Dspace. Open to all. | Dspace. Open to all. |
Search | High | Several search modes including basic KW, guided, and "power". The latter offers lots of check-boxes and drop-downs to narrow the search. I assume they are all KW searching the metadata, not the objects themselves. Later note: I could be wrong, it could be KW searching everything. | Keyword. | Keyword. |
Other search features | ?? | Quotes to phrase search; Boolean; truncation; synonym search. Wow! | Not clear | Not clear |
Results sorting | High | Title, Date, Rank, Rating. Don't know how the last two work. | None | None |
Browse | Medium | Several browse options including by discipline, institution, program, or license type. Probably not useful to us. | Browse by title, author, subject, date | Browse by title, author, subject, date |
- | - | Overall I have my concerns. Our objects are lost amid everything else in SOLR, and there's no sense of "community" here. See my section below about community. | Pretty good ... | Pretty good ... |
- | - | - | - | - |
Features for Uploading Materials | - | - | - | - |
Accepts all file types librarians might use for instructional materials: .doc, .pdf, html, .swf (Flash), .zip, .ppt, videos | High | Yes | NO! Sadly, they only want animated tutorials built in Qarbon Viewlet. LATE BREAKING NEWS: It appears that just this month they have decided to allow other types of content. | Seems to accept all. |
Accepts URLs, where the original object lives on the library's own server | High | Yes | Not sure, doubtful. | Not sure, doubtful. |
Accepts IMS Content Package modules (that what you can be export from Learning Management Systems like WebCT | High | Yes | Not sure | Not sure. |
The uploading procedure is reasonable: straightforward, not too complex or demanding. | High | Looks ok, but I don't know what counts as "reasonable" to most people. | Not sure. | Not sure. |
Uploader can input un-controlled metadata. | High | Yes -- title, short description, plus free keywords (although it's a little annoying, because you have to hit Add word by word). | Yes -- title, abstract, keywords. | Yes -- title, abstract, keywords. |
Useful fields of controlled/structured metadata. | Medium | Lots -- discipline, target grade/year, "resource type", file format, length of time to use resource | File Type, Contact Information, Viewing Time and Intended Audience (i.e Undergrads) | Assume same as ANTS. |
Custom classification system suitable for librarian LO | Would be nice | Could ask for this in the future. | No | No. |
Intellectual property control | High | Two licenses to choose from, BC Commons or Creative Commons. The former is problematic: the resource will only be displayed to users with BCcampus accounts, quite a barrier. | Creative Commons only | I assume CC. |
Account and role control | ?? | BCcampus manages accounts. An account is necessary to upload objects. Less than ideal if we'd like librarians from outside BC to store objects here (and why wouldn't we?). | Have to get a DSpace account; probably not difficult. | Have to get a DSpace account; probably not difficult. |
- | - | - | - | - |
Interoperability with other repositories | - | - | - |
Can expose our LO metadata to be harvested by another repository | ?? | Yes | Since it's DSpace, probably possible. But Scott says he can't grab them. | Presumably "yes". |
Can harvest metadata from related repositories and include in our search results | ?? | Scott has a harvester. | Doubtful. | Doubtful. |
- | - | - | - | - |
Community features | - | - | - | - |
As stated above, it's my view that the tool becomes much more compelling if we have a kind of "community portal" -- a website where librarians could come and search for material in our own section of the repository. Features could include: a search box with two radio buttons: "Search this community" and "Search all of SOL*R"; our own logo (next to the SOL*R logo, of course); possibly a browse feature for our custom classification system; auto-generated stats: "top-five downloaded objects", "newest five objects", etc.; a place for announcements; a place for links and other text | High, I think | SOLR alas has none of these features at present. | See the ANTS homepage for the kinds of community features I'm interested in. It has "Recent Items", an RSS feed of new items, and links to related resources. | Similar to ANTS. |
Community editors can "vet" objects. | Not sure. Would we want this? | No. | Don't know. | Has a peer-review stream. |
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.