A Durable Space: Technologies for Accessing our Collective Digital Heritage

Given at NISO Virtual Conference: Dealing with the Data Deluge: Successful Techniques for Scientific Data Management, April 23, 2014.

Transcript

1. A Durable Space Technologies for Accessing our Collective Digital Heritage David Wilcox Fedora Product Manager DuraSpace
2. A place for my stuff • What is a repository? • A repository provides long-term storage and preservation of digital content • It also provides long-term access in the form of persistent URLs
3. The repository landscape • Many repository software packages are designed to support institutional repositories • Examples include: DSpace, EPrints, and Digital Commons • These solutions tend to be easy to setup and manage but offer limited customization
4. What is Fedora? • Flexible Extensible Durable Object Repository Architecture • Fedora is OPEN SOURCE digital repository software • It is developed, adopted, and supported internationally • We’re building Fedora 4 • The entire codebase has been re-written to support the needs for robust and full-featured repository services for the next decade
5. Fedora integrates with other applications • Fedora typically sits between a back-end file system and a front-end user interface • A wide variety of back-end file systems are supported • Popular front-end user interfaces include Hydra and Islandora
6. How big is the community? • There are over 320 Fedora installations (that we know of!) • Our community is growing: • 41 Fedora sponsors • 19 active developers • 17 leadership group members • 10 steering group members
7. • We are an independent 501(c)(3) non-profit • We provide leadership and support for: • Fedora Commons • DSpace • VIVO • We also provide software services! • DuraCloud • DSpaceDirect
8. Sources of funding 2011 6% 21% 42% 31% Moore Grant Other Grants Sponsorship Services 2014 33% 32% 35%
9. Sponsorship in on the rise! $0 $125,000 $250,000 $375,000 $500,000 2011 2012 2013 2014
10. Building toward sustainability • We’re broadening the funding base • More sponsors at lower funding amounts • Raising the overall level of funding • We’re hiring! • Specifically, I was hired as the Product Manager • Andrew Woods is the Tech Lead • We’ve established a governance model • Fedora is governed by a Leadership group and a Steering group
11. How does Fedora support research data?
12. Model your data however you want • Research data can take many forms • Fedora is flexible enough to store and preserve any file type • Your data may also be inter-related in complex ways • No problem! Fedora provides native RDF support so you can relate things however you want
13. Metadata Spreadsheet Audio Video Metadata PDF Metadata PDF Publication 1 Publication 2 Research Data
14. Metadata Spreadsheet Metadata PDF Metadata PDF Publication 1 Publication 2 Research Data 1 Metadata Video Metadata Audio Research Data 2 Research Data 3
15. Store and manage large files • Research data comes in all shapes and sizes • Huge datasets in spreadsheets • High resolution images • High-quality audio/video recordings • Fortunately, Fedora supports files of virtually any size
16. Manage external files • Your research data may be stored in an external file system • Fedora can project over these files and treat them as if they were in the repository • Fedora’s management and preservation features will be available to these files
17. Preserve your data • Fedora provides a variety of preservation features • Automated fixity checking (checksums) • Backup and restore of the entire repository • You can also create new versions every time you make a change: • Across the repository • Only for certain actions
18. Research data use cases
19. Institutional repositories • Repository managers need to upload publications and associated research datasets • Publications and research data files can uploaded with associated metadata • Each file can be associated with any number of other files in the repository
20. Managing publications
21. Associating research data
22. Smithsonian Institute • SIdora is designed to support the research process from beginning to end • Researchers upload files to the repository and use it directly in their analysis • The entire research process is documented and preserved alongside the finished publication
23. Managing concepts
24. Adding resources
25. Editing metadata
26. Uploading datasets
27. Useful links • Fedora 4 wiki • https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF • Fedora community mailing list • https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/fedora- community • Fedora developers mailing list • https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/fedora- tech
28. Questions?