Collaborate

Meeting Notes
2008-10-07

A. Reviewed Charge
B. Needs assessment "interview" has gone out to faculty who have agreed to particpate from all IUP colleges. This information will be especially important in the post-selection phase, when we plan how to implement a successful DR.

C. Review of Product Evaluations

1. Discussion of Dspace Evaluation
- IUP: currently used for Dissertation/Thesis service; has also been tested by Music and Art
- Summary: has all apparent key functions. It also has a strong design emphasis towards archival persistence.
? Verify document and object format conversion tool?
*** Warrants continued consideration; this is a benchmark system.

2. Discussion of E-Prints
- Summary: General open-source and interoperability orientation. Seems to have less access control; group, workflow, and role tools not emphasized or granular. Has some format conversion tools as plug-ins.
*** May warrant further consideration.

3. Discussion of Greenstone
- Summary: Primarily an out-of-the-box instalation, user-friendly but not for enterprise-level use: no workflow, minimal permissions, not scalable.
*** No further consideration.

.4 Discussion of bePress
- Summary: Turn-key, hosted, costly-subscription, proprietary product. Does not feature group and community-based management. Emphasis is on presentation, not project management. Evolved front-end.
*** No further consideration.

CONCLUSION -

We have reviewed four of six evaluated candidates, recommending two be no longer considered. We will complete review of preliminary evaluations of the remaining two candidates next meeting and determine what further research, including possible test installations will be required to finalize the recommendation for a product.

Next meeting: two candidates remain: Content DM and Fedora ...

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Side issues raised:
- ? Have we accounted for the importance of archival "persistence" in our evaluation and review?
- ? Is conversion of media-formats a necessary tool?
- ? Is file versioning a capacity that is common or necessary?
- ? What kinds of multi-lingual support are available; unicode; multi-lingual?