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ABSTRACT

The Fedora content management system embodies a powerful and flexible digital object model. This paper describes a new open-source software front-end that enables end-user librarians to transfer documents and metadata in a variety of formats into a Fedora repository. The main graphical facility that Fedora itself provides for this task operates on one document at a time and is not librarian-friendly. A batch driven alternative is possible, but requires documents to be converted beforehand into the XML format used by the repository, necessitating a need for programming skills. In contrast, our new scheme allows arbitrary collections of documents residing on the user's computer (or the web at large) to be ingested into a Fedora repository in one operation, without a need for programming expertise. Provision is also made for editing existing documents and metadata, and adding new ones. The documents can be in a wide variety of different formats, and the user interface is suitable for practicing librarians. The design capitalizes on our experience in building the Greenstone librarian interface and participating in dozens of workshops with librarians worldwide.

REFERENCES

• 1: P. Achananuparp and R. B. Allen. Developing a student-friendly repository for teaching principles of repository management. In DigCCurr: International Symposium in Digital Curation, Chapel Hill, NC, US, 2007.
• 2: D. Bainbridge, K. D. Edgar, J. R. McPherson, and I. H. Witten. Managing change in a digital library system with many interface languages. In T. Koch and I. Sølvberg, editors, Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries, 7th European Conference (ECDL), volume 2769 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science, pages 350--361, Trondheim, Norway, 2003. Springer.
• 3: R. Cover. Muradora GUI for Fedora repository uses SAML and XACML for federated identity. Cover Pages, October 2007. http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2007-10-26-a.html.
• 4: C. G. Kortekaas. Making Fedora easier to implement with Fez. Open Repositories, January 2007. http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view.php?pid=UQ:11924.
• 5: Carl Lagoze , Sandy Payette , Edwin Shin , Chris Wilper, Fedora: an architecture for complex objects and their relationships, International Journal on Digital Libraries, v.6 n.2, p.124-138, April 2006 [doi>10.1007/s00799-005-0130-3]
• 6: Sandra Payette , Carl Lagoze, Flexible and Extensible Digital Object and Repository Architecture (FEDORA), Proceedings of the Second European Conference on Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries, p.41-59, September 21-23, 1998
• 7: Ian H. Witten , David Bainbridge, A retrospective look at Greenstone: lessons from the first decade, Proceedings of the 7th ACM/IEEE-CS joint conference on Digital libraries, June 18-23, 2007, Vancouver, BC, Canada [doi>10.1145/1255175.1255204]
• 8: Ian H. Witten , David Bainbridge , Gordon Paynter , Stefan Boddie, The Greenstone plugin architecture, Proceedings of the 2nd ACM/IEEE-CS joint conference on Digital libraries, July 14-18, 2002, Portland, Oregon, USA [doi>10.1145/544220.544285]

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.3 INFORMATION STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL
      H.3.7 Digital Libraries

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)

General Terms:
Design, Human Factors

Keywords:
end-user collection building, fedora digital repository, graphical user interface