RE: lib-ir: supporting pages for SB

[Carol Hixson <chixson@darkwing.uoregon.edu>]

I have the same concerns about putting
these items in SB.

Can anyone suggest an easy-to-locate
and remember space where handouts for
Scholars' Bank can be kept and where
any member of the library community
can access them? What's an alternative
approach? It has to be something that I
can get into for depositing and replacing
files and that anyone else in the library can
get into for downloading/printing.

Carol



At 10:37 AM 4/19/2005, JQ Johnson wrote:


>- As pages are updated, I would either need to replace
>files, keep older and newer versions of the same file,
>or not update files at all
>
>
>I think this is the key conceptual question, and that it relates to a basic
>question about how permanent/archival we want Scholars' Bank to be.  If we
>see it as evolving into a storehouse for archival copies, then we probably
>don't want to put frequently changed items into it (since dspace currently
>doesn't have a built in version control system); in this model we would only
>put items in if we wanted them to be part of "the historical record".  On
>the other hand, if we want to see Scholars' Bank evolving into an access
>tool for copies that are not tightly controlled, then this is a good idea
>for the "advantages" reasons Carol mentions.
>
>My own feeling is that we'd be better off leaning to the archival side and
>keeping the use copies of help files etc. on the server but not within
>scholars' bank.  I wouldn't mind sticking a set of archival copies within
>Scholars' Bank if we believe that the current snapshot of the documentation
>qualifies as something that deserves to be archived.  But I don't think we
>should be in the habit of replacing files.
>
>This points in my mind to 2 weaknesses of the current technology:
>  1/ Dspace doesn't have a built in version control system.  There are good
>systems out there such as CVS and RCS (and evolving new models like wikis),
>so it's puzzling that nobody has taken the conceptual approach of seeing an
>item as something that can accrete new information (both content and
>metadata) over time with version and timestamping.
>  2/ Dspace isn't optimal for display of use copies.  In Carol's model she
>creates PDF files and stores them, but what if the intellectual content of
>the pages she wanted to store didn't encode well in PDF?  For example, what
>if the point of the help file was to provide the search form or some other
>HTML-specific feature?