Re: [EP-underground] Re: EPrints, DSpace or ESpace abou design and interface (fwd)

Hi, I'm replying to you and the list.

The tricky thing with eprints is that it has many possible features and 
tools which some archives may want, others not.

Making an interface which adapts to show the available features and 
allows the local admin to configure it too has been a huge challenge.

I am facinated by wikis but I'm not sure that eprints is quite the place 
for them. We've experiemented with
(a) creating an associated wiki page with each article
(b) creating a web forum for each article

and Ted Nelson (hypertext rebel/freedom fighter) has been using eprints 
in an interesting way. Text only deposits, and the author can append to 
the end of their file, but can't (shouldn't!) edit it. These files can 
then be dynamically quoted, although that's still quite experimental at 
this stage...
http://www.xanadu.com.au/dlit/sample.vhtml
http://www.xanadu.com.au/dlit/

The question for EPrints (and similar packages): Which tools like this 
should we build in? Which should we attempt to support but not bundle, 
and which are not our problem!?

I feel that it's important not to be jack-of-all-trades, but build a 
solid base which allows local inovators to add new tools, and ideally 
share the successful ones. EPrints 3 will have a more plugin based 
architecture which will go some way to provide a way to support 
interesting new features, not in the core.

I think many managers/librarians might be very worried about things like 
wikis. They take some time to get a feel for. Also, the world is full of 
empty wiki's. Much like eprint archives it's easy to create a wiki but 
hard to build a community.


Stevan Harnad wrote:

>Evelyn, I have forwarded your posting to the eprints list rather than
>the AmSci list. The AmSci is about archive *filling* policy, not about
>suggestions for archiving software features. Please sign on to
>eprints-unbderground is you wish to discuss eprints features.
>
>    http://software.eprints.org/maillist.php
>
>Cheers, Stevan Harnad
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Wed, 22 Sep 2004 14:23:59 -0300 (BRT)
>From: Evelyn Cristina Pinto <[email protected]>
>To: American Scientist Open Access Forum
>    <[email protected]>
>Subject: Re: EPrints, DSpace or ESpace abou design and interface
>
>I've been studying and thinking about design for digital libraries and I
>have some comments and suggestions.
>
>Libraries have important roles in society and they interact with many other
>important institutions such as scholarly communication, professional
>societies, legal system and higher education. Now we've been developing
>digital library software and we have to be careful to reflect on
>relationships, values and mechanisms that the library system has.
>
>If we maintain the possible characteristics and bring some useful
>innovation, probably we'll be successful, because good software design
>adapts the software to the reality, not the opposite. A common trap is to
>incorporate software patterns into the design. See more about it on an
>interesting article by Phil Agre:
>http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/dl.html.
>
>I have installed Eprints software already and I've used it many times. I think
>that there are many positive aspects like excellent documentation,
>installation facilities and it works well (few bugs), but I think that the
>design and interface could be improved much more.
>
>For example, it's hard to find out how to deposit an article though the
>home page. And the self-archiving process is not easy to do on Eprints.
>I think that the tool to deposit comments about articles is great, but I
>think that there could be more space to debate. The search and browse
>system are good but they could also incorporate a little more on the way that
>people do search on traditional libraries.
>
>Digital libraries could be used for collective cognition processes
>(Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace by Pierre
>Levy), but we need to incorporate incentives for information change. On
>this kind of software, there could be tools for producing scientific
>articles in a cooperative way like Wikipedia. It's amazing the quality
>level of some articles there.
>
>Other point that I want to emphasize are the methodology to develop
>software for digital libraries. I think that there are two very good ways:
>the bazaar method and the extreme programming method.
>
>The bazaar method uses many developers, testers and users to produce the
>software. So it can satisfy the users because users are also the software
>programmers. And there's another advantage: there are many eyes to correct
>the bugs. For more details, see
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar.
>
>Extreme Programming states that the users and developers must work on the
>same physical place to make easier the communication among them. For more
>details, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_programming.
>
>Please, I want to know your comments about my comments.
>
>Best regards,
>Evelyn.
>----------------
>master student in Computer Science - IME-USP
>  
>

-- 
Christopher Gutteridge -- [email protected] -- +44 (0)23 8059 4833
University of Southampton, School of Electronics and Computer Science