Wednesday 19 December 2012

ReDBox Community Day and a half on Feb 19-20, 2013

Here is a date for your 2013 Calendar...

Flinders University will be hosting a ReDBox Community Day and a Half on 19/20 February 2013.

Please Register directly with Amanda Nixon either
by phone (08) 8201 5217
or email [amanda.nixon@flinders.edu.au] by the 8th February 2013.

Amanda will provide accommodation options and more information.

Places are limited, but there is no charge – due to ANDS sponsorship.

Draft agenda


Tuesday 19th February

Introduction


9.30 Welcome (Prof Richard Constantine, PVC (Information Services) and CIO, Flinders University)
9.40 Introduction/Housekeeping (Amanda Nixon, Flinders University)
9.50 Libraries and eResearch (Ian McBain, University Librarian, Flinders University)
10.15 ReDBox Review – the past 18 months (TBA, QCIF)
10.45 Morning tea

New Functionality coming into ReDBox


11.15 Data Management Planning Tool (Amanda Nixon)
11.45 Strategic Reporting (Vicki Picasso, University of Newcastle)
12.15 The Claw (TBA, University of Western Sydney)
12.45 Lunch

Different Institutions/Different Approaches


1.45 University of South Australia (Angelica Healey)
2.15 University of Adelaide (Cathy Miller)
2.45 UTS (Sharyn Wise)
3.15 Afternoon Tea
3.45 James Cook University (Marianne Brown)
4.15 Wrap up and close (Amanda Nixon)

Wednesday 20 February 2013

Introduction


9.15 Welcome/Housekeeping (Amanda Nixon)
9.20 ANDS – the Future? (TBA, ANDS)
9.40 Break out to groups – set up your own mini meetings… OR
ReDBox/RM users/Interested in links to data storage
10.45 Morning tea
11.15 Panel – ReDBox – the next 18 months
TBA (ANDS)
Peter Sefton (University of Western Sydney)
Megan Capicchiano (Deakin University)
12.00 Wrap up and close (Amanda Nixon)




Tuesday 18 December 2012

Metadata Stores Community News #10

Apologies for any cross-posting

1. Congratulations! Overview of 2012: 22 Metadata Stores Projects with 22 start dates, Software choices: 13.5 ReDBox (0.5 is using Mint), 4 VIVO, 3 homegrown, 1 ORCA, 20 Steering Committees with 129 data management champions.

2. NLA/Trove registrations: A reminder of the link to the instructions for setting up an account for contributing records to the Trove and that you cc simon.pockley@ands.org.au in to your communications with the NLA. You can expect the TIM training session to be in mid-January (date to be announced).

3. ReDBox users: Duncan Dickinson has provided an overview of what ReDBox delivers with respect to Metadata Stores deliverables. More work is scheduled that will help fulfil requirements so it'd be worth looking at the overview and chasing up information you may need for your project. Please check and let Duncan know of edits/issues. You can even add comments to the document (pls put your name in the comment so that he knows where it came from).

4. Regular Clinics: The next Wednesday Metadata Stores surgery/clinic will be held on Wednesday January 9th 2012 at 10:00am (Melb time)- a reminder will be sent out on the Monday before with the log-in details.

Seasons Greetings to everyone and best wishes for the coming year...

Simon

Thursday 13 December 2012

NLA Trove registration

If you have not yet registered with NLA/Trove please review the registration steps outlined in the post on Friday 7th December 2012.

Important new step: When you send emails to the NLA please cc simon.pockley@ands.org.au

The reason for asking that you do this is so that we (ANDS) can have a sense of who is doing what and when. That way we can time our training workshops to meet your needs and facilitate resolution of any delays you might be experiencing.

Best wishes

Simon

Tuesday 11 December 2012

Software choices for Metadata Stores projects

In the October Metadata Stores Newsletter #9 there was a call for your rationales for choosing Metadata Stores software. The following rationales have been provided for sharing. If you have not already done so and would like to share yours, then please email a paragraph to be added to this (unordered) list:

University of Adelaide: The two candidate Metadata Store Solutions originating from academic institutions are very different in nature. ReDBox is an Australian developed Metadata Store focused on curating metadata within an institution. VIVO, originating from Cornell University, is much wider in scope aiming to use Semantic Web functionality to provide an overarching discovery and network building tool for researchers across institutions.

The comparative review examined the attributes of each system in terms of functionality, vendor capability, service and support, vision and cost. This document summaries that comparative review.

In general ReDBox can be considered to be a much smaller system in comparison to VIVO in terms of scope, complexity and vision. This lighter weight system is better focused on the needs of the University of Adelaide’s Research Metadata Store Project, with key advantages in the areas of complexity, workflow implementation and support. ReDBox overall represents a better fit for the needs of the Research Metadata Store Project - (Evaluation document attached).

The University of South Australia has evaluated a number of open source software solutions as part of the Research Metadata Store project. In order to ensure that UniSA has an enterprise-wide Research Metadata Store solution that not only meets our deliverables for the ANDS project but also fulfils the need for an overall metadata store solution, the Project Team has documented the complete set of ANDS requirements in addition to capturing all the UniSA requirements for a research metadata store then compared each open source software solution against the combined ANDS and UniSA requirements - (Evaluation document attached).

University of Queensland is developing custom software for its metadata store. Existing software that was available at the time did not complement other systems at the university and required non-trivial customisation to integrate. A custom approach gave the project more control over what functionality is available, how it is implemented and the timeline for delivery -- which was important for reducing the project risk, since many aspects of the project had never been done before. The approach requires more development resources, but it is expected the investment will result in a solution that is better aligned and evolves with the diverse and changing needs of the university.

University of Western Australia: UWA chose VIVO for its ANDS Metadata Store for several reasons: its potential to develop into a full ‘Research Profiles’ system, its use of Linked Data / Semantic Web technology, and the availability of Australian expertise at Melbourne, Griffith and QUT. We chose not to use an integrated repository/metadata store system like ReDBox, largely because we were already using a commercial product (DigiTool) for our publications repository. DigiTool itself was not suitable as an ANDS metadata store, and building an ANDS metadata store directly on to DigiTool was not an option.

The Australian National University’s reasoning for the adoption of Vivo is a little more complex than it first appears.

Our abstracted high level architecture is in appendix 2 of our project management plan and our choice of orca revolves around our need to have a store of some sort in our implementation. We have looked at a number of solutions

1) virtualising the store, i.e. pulling the data in real time from the various sources and building a display tool
2) using vivo as the display tool and simply pulling the data from a variety of sources and caching it in vivo
3) using orca as a backing store for data

We've come to the conclusion that a purely virtual store is not practical which means we need an interim store if only to store newly minted NLA party identifiers.
As we were already planning to use orca as a standalone collections registry populated from our data capture and seeding the commons projects it made sense to extend the use of orca rather than have another database.

Vivo we discounted because of its implicit organisational model - we did have it running with a very sparse set of data harvested from a number of sources, but we felt it was very person centric as opposed to research output centric
However our use of orca is pragmatic and designed to save us development time - there is no reason in our architecture why it could not be replaced by something else that did the job, and because we are using a very agile methodology we may yet do so should orca have performance problems.

It's our intention to then build a front end that gives a number of views and to see the core system effectively as middleware that supports a range of standard queries.
In that way the metadata store could be used as a source to populate individual research school's web pages in a standard manner to get a consistent view (and presentation) of the information across the institution.

University of New South Wales reviewed ReDBox, Vivo, MyTARDIS and the in house ResData. The evaluation was detailed and the conclusion was that the existing system ResData could be extended to include the required functionality and combined with Mint. However the other systems would require significant work to integrate with the existing systems.

Reminders: GoTo meetings: Today - Tues 11th Dec and Wed 12th Dec

Please remember

the RedBox NLA/Trove walkthrough is Tuesday 11th Dec 12:00pm (Melb time) see previous post for log-in details.

and

the regular Wednesday drop-in is Wednesday 12th Dec 10:00am (Melb time) see previous post for log-in details

Friday 7 December 2012

How to set up your NLA Trove Account

For those who have yet to set up their accounts with the National Library of Australia (NLA), here is a reminder of the process.

There are prerequisites that must be met before contacting NLA.

  1. Have your ISIL code and contributor name
  2. Have records ready for harvesting (very important)
  3. Have a harvesting point
  4. Records are either in RIF-CS or EAC-CPF
  5. Records should be available for harvest via OAI

Please be familiar with these training modules. Any questions, please ask.


From the NLA’s perspective you are the Contributor. To get your party records into Trove, the basic process - in sequence is:

  1. You, the Contributor, have records to Contribute to the NLA Party Infrastructure
  2. The Contributor makes these records available for harvest via OAI-PMH in a schema that the NLA can process (RIF-CS or EAC-CPF)
  3. The Contributor provides to Trove the following details:
    • Contributor name
    • Contributor ISIL
    • Contact person
    • Schema used for records
    • Base URL for harvesting by NLA via OAI-PMH
  4. With this information the Trove submits a request to the NLA’s IT Section to set up the Institution as a Contributor in Trove and the Trove Identities Manager (TIM) - (this can take a week or more to happen).
  5. When this has been done the Trove team will set up the NLA TEST Harvester to do a Test harvest of the records. These records are checked for content and if changes are required the Trove team will communicate with you.
  6. When any issues are resolved, Trove will do a full Test harvest and pass the records through the auto matching process and the records that pass the auto rules will be loaded to Trove TEST and the records that fail the auto match process will be loaded to the unmatched record queue in the TIM Beta system.
  7. The Contributor can then be given access to the TIM system to their un-matched records so they can manually check for existing names to match against or to create new records from their unmatched records. This access requires the Contributor to be a Trove registered user, by signing up to both the Trove production service ( http://trove.nla.gov.au/) and the Trove Test system (http://trove-test.nla.gov.au/) using the same user name, password and email address.
  8. If there are no issues with the records in TIM Beta and Trove Test , we will then complete the work and do a harvest into Trove and TIM, where the records will be publically available with their NLA party identifier.
  9. Trove will then set up a schedule to do automatic incremental harvest at a time and frequency that suits the Contributor. A party record is allocated an NLA party identifier when it passes the auto matching rules in the identity service processing and is displayed in Trove in the People and Organisation zone. For records that do not pass the auto matching rules the records are loaded to the Trove Identities Manager (TIM) where manually reviewing is required. When an unmatched record in TIM is matched to an existing identity or is used to create a new identity, then this record acquires a NLA identity and is displayed in Trove.

Some useful documentation about the process for a Contributor to get their records into the Party Infrastructure is on the NLA wiki page . See the ‘Contributor Guide to the Party Infrastructure’.

If you have questions or just need clarification then,
  1. Submit your enquiry through the Trove Contact us form and indicate your question is about contributing People records.
  2. Contact Simon Pockley 03 99020549, 0418575525 or Julie McCulloch 03 9905 6275,
    0412 673 335 or Amir Aryani 02 6125 0586, 0478 401 224

Thursday 6 December 2012

ReDBox: Walk-through Curation Process: Tues 11th Dec 12:00pm AEDT

Toby O'Hara (UWS) has organised a walk-through of the curation process that is built into ReDBox, with an emphasis on the NLA-ID component where the Mint passes records to Trove/NLA and receives an NLA-ID back.

If you are interested in what ReDBox/Mint does out of the box, and the minimum configurations that are required to get NLA integration working - then this is for you.

Toby is expecting this to be a fairly technical discussion, relevant to the code and what code does what functions. Important to note: if anyone has rewritten the code with major customisations, and is having trouble, that's for a separate discussion.

Even if you've done this before, it might be worth joining in the conversation and adding tips and pointers that you have experienced yourself (UoN looking at you).


How to participate

1. Please join my meeting, 11/12/2012 at 12:00 PM AEDT.

https://www4.gotomeeting.com/join/199948127

2. Use your microphone and speakers (VoIP) - a headset is recommended.

Or,

call in using your telephone. Dial 61290873701 Access Code: 199-948-127
Audio PIN: Shown after joining the meeting
Meeting ID: 199-948-127

GoToMeeting® Online Meetings Made Easy®

Not at your computer?

Click the link to join this meeting from your iPhone®, iPad® or Android® device via the GoToMeeting app.

Tuesday 4 December 2012

Reminder Drop-in GoTo Meeting - Wednesday 5th Dec 10:00am (Melb Time)

Metadata Stores regular clinic/surgery - Wednesday 5th Dec 10:00am (Melb Time.

Meeting link: https://www4.gotomeeting.com/join/902515079

Or, call in using your telephone.

Dial +61 2 8355 1031

NEW Access Code: 902-515-079

Audio PIN: Shown after joining the meeting

If you have already downloaded the client

NEW GoTo Meeting ID: 902-515-079

Tuesday 27 November 2012

Reminder Drop-in GoTo Meeting - Wednesday 28th Nov 10:00am (Melb Time)

Metadata Stores regular clinic/surgery - Wednesday 28th Nov 10:00am (Melb Time.

Meeting link: https://www4.gotomeeting.com/join/902515079

Or, call in using your telephone.

Dial +61 2 8355 1031

NEW Access Code: 902-515-079

Audio PIN: Shown after joining the meeting

If you have already downloaded the client

NEW GoTo Meeting ID: 902-515-079

Wednesday 21 November 2012

New link between ANDS Demo and Trove Test

We are pleased to inform you that the new link between ANDS Demo (demo.ands.org.au) and Trove Test (trove-test.nla.gov.au/people) is now functional. This link makes the party records in Trove Test visible to ANDS Demo, and as a result you can test how your records in Trove Test will appear in ANDS Demo. The complete test for NLA integration workflow (ANDS Workflow 1) includes the following steps:

  1. Set up an OAI-PMH interface for Trove Test harvest.
  2. Add one or more party records through the OAI-PMH interface to Trove Test.
  3. Resolve unmatched record(s) in TIM Beta (https://www.nla.gov.au/tim-beta/app). At the end of this step you should be able to see your records in Trove Test.
  4. Retrieve the NLA party identifiers using Trove API (https://wiki.nla.gov.au/display/ARDCPIP/Party+Infrastructure+APIs) (link updated 20-02-2013) or for the purpose of this test you can find them manualy by searching the name of the party records in Trove Test.
  5. Set up an OAI-PMH interface for ANDS Demo.
  6. Add one or more collection records to ANDS Demo with the NLA party identifier as the key in the related object element of these records.
  7. After 24 hours the NLA party records should appear under the NLA group in ANDS Demo (http://demo.ands.org.au/search#!/p=1/tab=All/group=National Library of Australia), and they will be linked to the collection(s).

Tuesday 20 November 2012

Reminder to drop-in to the Metadata Stores conversation Wed 21st Nov 10:00am Melb time


From tomorrow we have new drop meeting detail for the Metadata Stores regular clinic/surgery.

NEW Meeting link: https://www4.gotomeeting.com/join/902515079

Or, call in using your telephone.

Dial +61 2 8355 1031

NEW Access Code: 902-515-079

Audio PIN: Shown after joining the meeting

If you have already downloaded the client

NEW GoTo Meeting ID: 902-515-079

Wednesday 14 November 2012

NLA Trove waypoints and TIM workshop/webinar

At eResearch 2012 it was suggested that ANDS conduct a Workshop/Webinar on matching names in the Trove Identities Manager (TIM). We are now attempting to get the timing right so that this workshop comes at a time when you are ready. We need to see where you are up to.

There would appear to be five waypoints where you have:

1. Completed Trove registration

2. Integrated into the Trove test environment
You may also recall a post relating Testing your NLA Party Infrastructure.


3. Integrated into Trove production


4. Retrieved NLA Identifiers
  • To complete this you should have retrieved one or more NLA identifiers and stored them in your local systems.

5. Supplied ANDS with the linked collections to NLA identifiers
  • To complete this you should have provide ANDS with the NLA identifiers in one of the following forms:
    • Workflow 1: as a related object to a collection, or
    • Workflow 2: as an identifier for a party record

Please let me know [simon.pockley@ands.org.au] where your project is up to. I will follow with an email reminder.






Monday 12 November 2012

A short note about ORCID, ANDS and the NLA

The ORCID identifying space is not the same as the NLA/Trove space, and each has different functionality and will serve different purposes. For example, the former would be useful for researchers who may wish to have multiple identities and the latter more useful for institutions seeking an authoritative ID.

ORCID only launched in production a few weeks ago. If you have had a play with ORCID you would have seen that some of the functionality is 'in construction'. ANDS is planning to support it in our identification infrastructure next year. 'Under the hood' - ORCID Identifiers are actually International Standard Name Identifiers (ISNI) and the two organisations (See ISNI and ORCID) are also working through any issues of complementary models and shared approaches. Identities from the National Library of Australia have already been uploaded to the ISNI space.

In the meantime, ORCID identifiers can be included as Identifiers in Party records (for Research Data Australia) where appropriate. There has been a request to Services to include ORCID as an Identifier type

Friday 9 November 2012

14th November 2012 change to Data Surgery

The regular weekly data surgery at 10:00am on Wednesday 14th November will be replaced next week by a 2:00pm (Adelaide time) video conference for those institutions that are using both ReDBox and ResearchMaster.

The video conference is being organised by Amanada Nixon who thought it might be a good idea to get together and discuss your different approaches.

Amanda is not envisaging anything too formal. If you would like to attend and have not received a calendar invitation, please contact Amanda and she will get back to you with the details.

The video conference will be held on Wednesday 14th November at 2:00pm Adelaide time.

Amanda Nixon
Manager, eResearch@Flinders
Flinders University Library
Ph (08) 8201 5217
amanda.nixon@flinders.edu.au

Tuesday 6 November 2012

Reminder Data Surgery Clinic (tomorrow) Wednesday 7th November

We will resuming our weekly data surgeries/clinics tomorrow, Wednesday 7th November at 10:00am. For anyone new to these drop-in sessions, they are very useful if you are interested in what others are doing and/or being introduced to people who might be able to help with particular problems.

Simply log into GoTo meeting at 10:00am

Meeting Link: https://www4.gotomeeting.com/join/435051343
Meeting ID: 435-051-343
Support information is here - http://ands.org.au/events/webinars/onlinemeetings.html
Or, call in using your telephone. Dial +61 2 8355 1030 Access Code: 435-051-343
Audio PIN: Shown after joining the meeting

Best wishes

Simon

Thursday 25 October 2012

Metadata Stores Community News #9

1. Software choice: The University of South Australia has evaluated a number of open source software solutions as part of the Research Metadata Store project. The Project Team documented the complete set of ANDS requirements in addition to capturing all the UniSA requirements for a research metadata store then compared each open source software solution against the combined ANDS and UniSA requirements. A summary of this evaluation [Google doc] is now available.

Consequently, there has been interest in comparing rationales for the choice of software for Metadata Stores. I am currently compiling a set of one paragraph summaries. Please contribute?

2. Research Data Management Guidelines: Congratulations to the University of Sydney on launch of their new site.

3. Workflows: Several universities have expressed an interest in comparing workflows - especially workflows relating to Data Management Planning and registering new Collections in the university.

Is there anyone who would be prepared to share their workflows? Please send me a version for sharing [simon.pockley@ands.org.au]

We have also been asked about workflow formatting requirements in the relation to Deliverable 6.

Acceptance: This will be demonstrated by a document description (with schematic) of the workflow that includes some form of alert or notification that a new collection has been, is being, or is about to be, created.

ANDS does not mandate any particular format for this description or the schematic. However, it would be useful if it was human readable. Here is an example of how ANDS describes a workflow Workflow 1: Contributing Party Records to Trove.

4. Metadata Stores surgery/clinic: The next clinic will be held on Novemeber 7th 2012 at 10:00am - a reminder will be sent out on the Monday before with the log-in details.

Tuesday 23 October 2012

Next weekly data surgery will be on the 7th November 2012

Please note that due to eResearch in Sydney next week and a clash this week, the next Metadata Stores weekly data clinic/surgery will be held at 10:00am on Wednesday the 7th November 2012.

For those in Queensland, there will be a Queensland Roundtable on the 25 Oct 2012 10:00-12:00pm local Brisbane Time.

Draft Agenda

Current Project Status - Each project
Current national level activity update from ANDS - Simon Pockley
Other business

If you would like to log-in by phone then contact Andrew White (ANDS/QCIF Research Data Analyst)

M: 0468 989 096
T: +61 7 3735 6735
F : +61 (0)7 3735 6650
Email: andrew.white@ands.org.au

Thursday 18 October 2012

Announcing DMP21


As we mentioned at our recent surgeries we hope to adapt the latest version of DMPonline to make it available.



Our version will have only 21 baseline data questions, but this can be expanded by you to meet your needs.
We hope the blog will help you understand what we are doing and our rational. We will post our thinking and results so you can follow our progress, comment and ask questions as we go.
With your help we will make DMP21 available and ready for you to customise and use at your institution.
As researchers create their data management plans you will be able to use their responses to advise and assist them.

The navigation bar shows the coverage of the questions in DMP21. These are the primary topic areas where researchers will contribute their information. These also become the areas of advice that researchers may require more help and assistance with. We aim to provide sound generic advice and information. DMP21 in addition allows institutions to add their own advice and local links to resources.

Subscribe now

Wednesday 17 October 2012

Reminder: Metadata Stores - Clinic/Surgery: Wednesday 10:00am-11:00am

If you would like to continue the discussion about Data Management Planning tools begun by Toby O'Hara...then drop into today's Metadata Stores - Clinic/Surgery: Wednesday 10:00am-11:00am

by following the GoTo meeting link:

Meeting Location: https://www4.gotomeeting.com/join/435051343

Use your microphone and speakers (VoIP) - a multimedia headset is recommended. Or, call in using your telephone.

Dial +61 2 8355 1030
Access Code: 435-051-343
Audio PIN: Shown after joining the meeting
Meeting ID: 435-051-343

Press for Information about GoTo Meeting technical requirements etc .

This is intended to be a weekly catch-up. An opportunity to raise issues, share and compare useful tips and resources.

Tuesday 9 October 2012

Reminder: Metadata Stores - Clinic/Surgery (Wednesday)

Metadata Stores - Clinic/Surgery: Wednesday 10:00am-11:00am

Drop-in to this regular event by following the GoTo meeting link:

Meeting Location: https://www4.gotomeeting.com/join/435051343

Use your microphone and speakers (VoIP) - a multimedia headset is recommended. Or, call in using your telephone.

Dial +61 2 8355 1030
Access Code: 435-051-343
Audio PIN: Shown after joining the meeting
Meeting ID: 435-051-343

Press for Information about GoTo Meeting technical requirements etc .

This is intended to be a weekly catch-up. An opportunity to raise issues, share and compare useful tips and resources.

Thursday 4 October 2012

Metadata Stores Community News #8

1. Metadata Stores - Clinic/Surgery: Now open every Wednesday 10:00am-11:00am

Anyone keen to discuss aspects of their project with like-minded colleagues is welcome to drop into this regular event by following the GoTo meeting link:

Meeting Location: https://www4.gotomeeting.com/join/435051343

Use your microphone and speakers (VoIP) - a multimedia headset is recommended. Or, call in using your telephone.

Dial +61 2 8355 1030
Access Code: 435-051-343
Audio PIN: Shown after joining the meeting
Meeting ID: 435-051-343

Press for Information about GoTo Meeting technical requirements etc .

The weekly catch up is an opportunity to raise issues, share useful tips and resources. The format has been useful for the latest round of Seeding the Commons projects. You might like to participate in various specific training/presentations/workshops that are being conducted in the same space between 11:00am - 12:00pm. For example, last Wednesday, Luis Martinez-Uribe spoke about how to develop a Data Management a Roadmap for your University.

2. ReDBox collaboration

Many hands make light work. 13 Universities have indicated that they are deploying ReDBox for their Metadata Stores projects. Would you like to share in the benefits of working collaboratively? Please contact Amanda Nixon either through the ReDBox list [redbox-repo@googlegroups.com] or directly [amanda.nixon@flinders.edu.au] [Ph (08) 8201 5217].

Amanda asks you to consider:

  1. An estimate of when you may be able to commit to this development model
  2. An indication of whether you will be contributing with cash or in kind

Would you send Amanda questions/comments/suggestions/changes to the original ReDBox feature development document and the list of possible fields for ReDBox 17 October (earlier if possible)? She will then will try to work them into something coherent that can be jointly endorsed and send to QCIF.

Note. You can access a working list of the choices of optional deliverables [Google doc]. N.B. this list may be slightly out of alignment with incoming Project Plans. Please contact Simon Pockley if you have updates.

Friday 21 September 2012

Researcher participation: a clever strategy from UWS

At the Metadata Stores roundtable in Sydney on the 31st August 2012, Susan Robbins (University of Western Sydney) outlined a clever strategy for getting researcher participation. Susan has kindly agreed to share:

'Our Research office selected about 30 key UWS researchers, from a range of subject areas, who had recently completed ARC or NHMRC grants (with possible data). To the spreadsheet, they added grant details and attached an associated publication. They sent this to me for information and to our DVC Research. The DVC emailed the researchers outlining the project, reasons why they should participate (and strongly urged them to do so) and said I would be in touch to discuss details.

I emailed the researchers the next day with some more information, including the specific grants identified by the Research Office and attaching the publication. About half the researchers emailed me back within a few days. About half of the rest had out of office messages and most have since been in touch and the rest didn’t ever respond. I made appointments to ring or visit the respondents (with a colleague) to discuss the project in more detail and what their participation would involve. Every single one agreed to participate.

The Library has access to a lot of the information required for the questionnaire, so we pre-populated it as much as possible. It was then emailed back to the researcher with the option to either complete and return or ring us to fill in the missing information. Most chose to do it themselves and send it back to us. There was usually a couple of emails/calls back and forth. This proved a popular way to participate as it meant less disruption for the researcher.'

Thank you Susan. If you need more details, you can contact her at: S.ROBBINS@uws.edu.a

Wednesday 5 September 2012

Metadata Stores Community News #7

  1. New guidance for D4 (NLA/Trove Identifiers)
    Connecting researchers to their data is much easier if researchers are uniquely identified. ANDS partnership with the National Library of Australia (NLA) to develop a National Party Infrastructure to provide persistent Identifiers for people and groups (Parties) is realised in Deliverable 4: demonstrated alignment of records about Parties with the ARDC Party Infrastructure…

    In response to your requests for a more quantitative goal for D4, ANDS recommends that Metadata Stores projects aim to:
    • include NLA Party Identifiers for the ARC/NMHRC grant investigators that have been started after 1st January 2009 and that you create and maintain NLA identifiers for the researchers whose research data is already published in Research Data Australia (RDA);
    • (…for those wanting to extend the reach of their projects) include Party Identifiers for grant recipients for the last 10 years. This extended coverage will enable institutions to develop a richer research portfolio based on award history.

    A recent survey 16 universities with Metadata Stores projects by Amir Aryani (ANDS) indicates that the numbers of Grant Investigators (2007-2010 - where investigators are counted once for each institution) should be easily manageable. Examples: RMIT 76, Deakin University 57, Griffith University 127,
  2. ReDBox collaboration meeting in South Australia
    A meeting is scheduled for 10am on Friday September 7 in the eResearch VisLab, Room 119 in the Physics Building at the University of Adelaide to discuss a possible collaboration around the mandatory deliverables as well as Integration with Research Master. For more details contact Andrew Williams [andrew.williams@ands.org.au] mobile: +61 410 221 647.
  3. 3 Minute Video: Duncan Dickinson describing ReDBox

Monday 27 August 2012

Project Governance - roles and responsibilities

To date, in the Metadata Stores Program, 11 Universities have established Project Steering Committees or Project Management Groups. Some of these groups meet monthly, some quarterly. Some are formally constituted with Terms of Reference (TOR). Some have ANDS representatives on them and some will continue on after the ANDS project completion date.

For those of you still working towards some form of Project Governance, the following outline of the various roles and responsibilities is intended to help.

Ideal structure




Roles and responsibilities

  • Responsible for the Steering Committee
    • Sets terms of reference
    • Provides direction and guidance
    • Sets priorities
    • Sets funding level
    • Sets timeline
    • Sets deliverables
    • Appoints chair person
    • Provides resources
  • Promotes the project work to VC colleagues and subordinates

Steering Committee or Project Board

  • Provides reports, advice and feedback to DVCR and other senior members of the university
  • Owns terms of reference
  • Monitors expenditure of funds
  • Reviews management of project risk
  • Ensures reports are regularly submitted to higher bodies and DVCR
  • Offer professional advice and support
  • Promotes the project work to colleagues and subordinates
  • Recruits subordinates to assist project work
  • Supports Project Manager
    • Provides resources
    • Provides support
    • Provides feedback
    • Provides guidance, direction and assistance [including direction on how to respond to events or constraints that are outside the control of the project]
    • Reviews project progress
    • Reviews each completed phase and approves progress to the next phase

Key behaviours

Generally, the Committee or Board manage by exception. This ensures that all members of the board are given equal opportunity to participate in Board level decision making processes and feedback from all members is actively solicited Project Board members do not regularly delegate attendance at meetings.

Steering committee/Project board roles

Chair / Executive

The Chair ultimately is responsible for the project, supported by the other board members.They ensure that the project is focused on achieving its objectives and delivering deliverables and outcomes that will achieve the projected benefits. The Project Chair will...

  • Be the decision maker with overall authority for implementing the Project Plan
  • Ensure that there is a coherent project organisational structure and a logical set of plans to deliver the project deliverables
  • Ensure that risks are being tracked and mitigated as effectively as possible

Other members

Represents the interests of their departments to all researchers who will be involved in the project.

Have authority to resolve project requirements and priority conflicts.

Ensure that appropriate quality control procedures are used to ensure the project meets ANDS and the universities own requirements.

Project Manager

  • Responsible to the Steering Committee
  • Promotes the project work to colleagues and subordinates
  • Responsible for day to day work of the project
  • Works with colleagues to deliver project outputs

Friday 24 August 2012

D 5: ARC and NHRMC registries as ‘sources of truth’.

ANDS staff have been busy with a swag of questions relating to the dimensions of Deliverables. Rather than post these all at once, it's probably more useful to keep them separate for further reference.

This question from La Trobe University is about Activity records...

…just looking at the acceptance criteria that you have put up for MS required deliverable D5, particularly in the light of how grant registry activity records are now being handled for ARC and NHMRC, I am hoping to clarify what is required under D5. As ANDS is now facilitating the direct migration of Activity records out of data from the ARC and NHRMC registries into RDA, (activity records to which our collection records presumably will link where appropriate), what direct dealings with these Activity records will our metadata stores be expected to have? Presumably we won't be originating any Activity records for ARC or NHMRC grants for harvest by RDA.

Should we instead be populating our metadata stores with the same activity records that RDA will be acquiring directly from the grant registries (and effectively just duplicating locally what RDA is already doing nationally)?

Should we be acquiring those records via RDA (to ensure alignment with RDA, inclusion of RDA data elements, etc.)?

I'm curious about what sort of role these records would be expected to have in our metadata store when we have not created them nor, presumably, added anything to them locally, and where we are not responsible for ensuring their alignment with any ‘sources of truth’. It puts them into a different category altogether from the party records and collection records that we will be storing, where we do have responsibility for their creation (including alignment with ‘sources of truth’) and integration into NLA or RDA. In this case we simply seem to be taking on responsibility for integrating these records from RDA into our local metadata store rather than the other way around as applies to our other types of records.

I'm curious as to what kind of outcome ANDS is looking for out of this process, and what functions the local versions of these records are supposed to be supporting, especially as ANDS itself has now taken responsibility for aligning activity records relating to ARC or NHMRC grants with their ‘sources of truth’.

Regarding grants that are not from either ARC or NHMRC, I assume that we should be creating these records locally and providing them for harvest by RDA as activity records and then post-harvest integrating additional elements added in by RDA to ensure that we retain alignment with the RDA versions of those records (much as we would do with party records harvested by the NLA).

Answer:

At the time that the Metadata Stores Program was initiated, it was anticipated that we (ANDS) would be able to facilitate the development of a service from ARC and NMHRC that would provide an automated content feed to Activity records. ANDS coverage of ARC/NMHRC Grant Activities is currently 2000-2010 (we can also make records for 2011 on request). These records were intended to act as place holders until the automated service was in place. Regrettably, the development of such a service is taking longer than we had anticipated. In fact, such a service is unlikely to exist before the Metadata Stores Program finishes.

Consequently, we need to be fairly pragmatic about this deliverable. This means that you are correct in thinking that you should continue to acquire those records via RDA and that it will be ANDS that aligns the Activity records relating to ARC or NHMRC grants with 'sources of truth' (for now). However, we would hope that you would have the ability to enhance your Activity records by updating them to include more accurate and current project descriptions that reflect the evolution of what a project aims to achieve and how it is being conducted.

Regarding grants that are not from either ARC or NHMRC, yes, the same principles apply: we expect you to create rich records locally and provide them for harvest by RDA as Activity records.

D5 Acceptance: Integration with the ANDS records derived from the Grants Registries will be demonstrated by inspection (by CLO) of nominated examples of Activity records. An expected date should be included in the Project Plan.

Thursday 16 August 2012

Testing your NLA/Trove Party infrastructure

These instructions have just come in from National Library of Australia (NLA). They should be of interest to those people wanting to get moving on the NLA/Trove Deliverable...

Before the NLA can harvest records from a Contributor's website you will need to complete steps 1-4 in the following sequence:

Note. This may be able to be completed in a few days but may take a couple of weeks, depending on the NLA's work pressure and resources.

  1. A Contributor should have records to contribute to the NLA Party Infrastructure
  2. A Contributor can make these records available for harvest via OAI-PMH in a schema we can process (RIF-CS or EAC-CPF)
  3. A Contributor provides details to Trove of the following:
    * Contributor name:
    * Contributor ISIL:
    * Contact person:
    * Schema used for records:
    * Base URL for harvesting by NLA via OAI-PMH:
    Note. Press for links to Training and detailed instructions on ISIL codes.
  4. When this information is received Trove submits a request to the NLA's IT Section to set up the Institution as a Contributor in Trove as well as for the Trove Identities Manager(TIM) - (Note. it can take a week or more for this to happen)
  5. When this has been done the Trove team will set up the NLA TEST Harvester to do a Test harvest of the records. These records are checked for content and if changes are required the Trove team will communicate with the nominated contact person. If Trove needs to make any alterations to the transformation steps for the records, the Trove team will have to submit a request to NLA's IT support.
  6. When any issues are resolved, Trove will do a full Test harvest and pass the records through the auto-matching process and the records that pass the auto rules will be loaded to Trove TEST. The records that fail the auto match process will be loaded to the unmatched record queue in the TIM Beta system.
  7. The Contributor will then be given access to the TIM system where they can view their un-matched records so they can manually check for existing names to match against or to create new records from their unmatched records. This access requires the Contributor to be a Trove registered user, by signing up to both the Trove production service [http://trove.nla.gov.au/] and the Trove Test system [http://trove-test.nla.gov.au/] using the same user name, password and email address.
  8. If there are no issues with the records in TIM Beta and Trove Test, the Trove Team will then complete the work and do a harvest into Trove and TIM. The records will then be publically available with their NLA party identifier.
  9. Trove will then set up a schedule to do automatic incremental harvest at a time and frequency that suits the Contributor.

A party record is allocated an NLA Party Identifier when it passes the auto-matching rules in the identity service processing and is displayed in Trove's People and Organisation zone. For records that do not pass the auto-matching rules the records are loaded to the Trove Identities Manager (TIM) where manually reviewing is required. When an unmatched record in TIM is matched to an existing identity or is used to create a new identity, this record acquires a NLA identity and is displayed in Trove.

Note: TIM is the system to manage the unmatched records not the system for a contributor to add their records.

Testing:

NLA will do the initial testing to make sure the records are being harvested, transformed, matched properly through the auto-matching rules and loaded to Trove.

When the NLA has them in the Trove Test and TIM Beta the Trove Team will let the contributor know and they can check to make sure their records are displaying the correct information in Trove.

Questions are welcome...

Friday 10 August 2012

Challenges for Developers at eResearch Australasia conference 2012

This year's eResearch Australasia conference in Sydney is a great opportunity for Developers to get-together and talk about the exciting work you are doing.

ANDS, NeCTAR and RDSI are encouraging Developers (and designers)to have FUN with activities that will help inspire new ideas.

See this announcement about the Developers Lounge for what is in store:

David F. Flanders (ANDS) is very keen for you to participate in the kick-off hardware hackfest at Sydney University on Sunday the 28th of October.

For more information, you can contact him at [david.flanders@ands.org.au].

Tuesday 7 August 2012

Storage-coupled data capture?

Peter Sefton (UWS) has written up some notes from the Metadata Stores round table in Sydney on the 27th July 2012.

He is keen to get some feedback about the architectures that projects are using, particularly in the ReDBox community.

Peter's post provides:

1. A quick survey of architectural approaches to connecting Data Capture applications to Research Data Catalogues and central repositories.

2. A short discussion of requirements for Data Capture application that would run on a file store and allow researchers to create useful collections of data from any file-based data.

If you support building or adapting a Storage-coupled data capture app as part of your Metadata Stores projects then, please go to his UWS blog and comment.


Note. By way of an answer to a line from Peter's Post: '...feed data to what ANDS calls Metadata Stores'...The origin of the term 'Metadata Stores' is shrouded in the mists of time. However, my understanding is that it was intended to point towards infrastructure rather than the Institution Repository (IR) space.

Friday 3 August 2012

Metadata Stores Community News #6

  1. Metadata Stores - fortnightly Q & A: Is there any interest in having a fortnightly Q & A (Tele or video conference) where project issues can be discussed? FAQs are in currently being assembled for your comment.

  2. Acceptance Criteria for required Deliverables: [press link] (thanks to Vicki Picasso and Alan Glixman for prompting discussion about these criteria).

  3. Bi-directional links in Research data Australia (RDA) to external related objects:Your input?

    The ability to opt-in or opt-out (in RDA) to bidirectional links to external objects was developed form a rationale where a data source was considered to represent one authority of information. If a link inferred from one authority is displayed within information obtained from another, there is a risk of mis-attribution of information. Currently, the default for automatically enabling two-way links in your own data source is 'on and the default for automatically enabling two-way links for external data sources is 'off’. ANDS is considering changing the opt-in/opt-out function so that bidirectional links for related Parties (internal and external) are always generated. We ask for your comment on either removing the opt-in/opt-out function or, making the default choice 'opt-in' but retaining the ability to 'opt-out'. Comments please.

  4. Sharing Cross Walks, Mappings and XSLTs: [press link]

    This is a forum for sharing and discussing semantic mappings and crosswalks in any state of development. Many ANDS partners find that schema mapping is a difficult step in completing their ANDS projects, and it is helpful to see how other people have approached the task. If similar schemas are being used, existing crosswalks may also provide a head start in the development process, if the original creator is willing to allow such use.

    If you are posting a crosswalk, please include the following information either in your post or within the crosswalk itself: names and versions (or profile or element set details) of the source and target schemas, a URL if the crosswalk is available publicly, and any restrictions on how the crosswalk can be used.

  5. Featured question: Is it mandatory or optional to provide Party records to Research data Australia (RDA)? (thanks to Hoylen Sue - UQ)

    At least one party record needs to be related to each collection described in Research Data Australia. Collection records connect to Party records using the local party record key or (preferred option) by including an NLA party identifier in their related object element. NLA identifiers are entered in the RIF-CS identifier element of local party records (type="AU-ANL:PEAU"), and as a key in the RIF-CS related object element of activity, collection and service records.

    Since the preferred model is to send party records directly to NLA Trove (instead of via RDA), then sending collection records to RDA with the NLA Party Identifier embedded in them will be sufficient. RDA will then source a Party record from NLA Trove.

    See link: Best practice for creating party records
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Best wishes
Simon

Metadata Stores: Acceptance criteria for required deliverables

Principles:

  • ANDS requires a Project Plan early in the project, in order to finalise project scope, choice of software and to confirm appropriate resourcing and planning;
  • If a project is embarking on metadata stores without existing infrastructure, then ANDS will not require delivery of the complete metadata store, nor all the deliverables depending on it - until the end of the project.
  • If a project is embarking on metadata stores with existing infrastructure, then ANDS expects that there will be a feed of records supplied to RDA (see Deliverable #1) by the middle of the project.
  • Remaining mandated deliverables are likely to have multiple dependencies on other software and organisation units, so ANDS will not require delivery until the end of the project.
  • ANDS encourages project to schedule deliverables earlier than agreed in the project description where possible.
  • Because there is likely to be a lengthy period between the Project Plan and other deliverables, ANDS requires regular and frequent progress reporting - every three months. Reporting will be lightweight, just a couple of pages, but ANDS needs to monitor progress closely, given that these are infrastructure projects with a large number of dependencies.
  • For consistency, ANDS is maintaining a ratio of payments across all projects of 25% each payment period.
D1
A working feed of records describing Collections and associated Activities, Parties and Services to Research Data Australia, in the current version of RIF-CS (1.3), demonstrated to meet the quality requirements for RIF-CS records as set by ANDS.

Acceptance: If the project is using an existing technology* then this feed is expected around the middle of the project. The feed will be confirmed by an inspection (by CLO*) of a sample of nominated records in Research Data Australia. If the technology is bespoke then an expected date should be included in the Project Plan

*Existing technology means that there is already a working Metadata Store.
*CLO = Client Liaison Officer (ANDS.
D2
A feed of collections from at least three distinct Faculties (or equivalent organisational units) within the institution to Research Data Australia

Acceptance:  This spread across Faculties is intended to support an institution-wide approach. The feed can be automated or manual.  The 3, or more, Faculties (or equivalent) will be confirmed by an inspection (by CLO) of a sample of nominated records in Research Data Australia.  An expected date should be included in the Project Plan.
D3
Demonstrated alignment of metadata records about Parties with an institutional name authority (HR or Library), with the authoritative form of the name sourced external to the metadata store, and with new researcher descriptions added to the metadata through regular updates from the name authority.

Acceptance: This interface between one or more nominated sources of party record details and the Metadata Store is expected to be confirmed by a statement of achievement by Project Manager.  Specifically, this will be demonstrated by an alignment of metadata records about parties with an institutional name authority (HR or Library), with the authoritative form of the name sourced external to the metadata store as well as new researcher descriptions added to the metadata through regular update from the name authority be confirmed by written statement by project partner. An expected date should be included in the Project Plan.
D4
Demonstrated alignment of metadata records about Parties with the ARDC Party Infrastructure Project, with researcher descriptions contributed to the NLA, and with People Australia identifiers for researchers recorded against researchers.

Acceptance:  Alignment with the NLA Party Infrastructure will be demonstrated by an inspection (by CLO) of examples of records using NLA Identifiers in Research Data Australia, as nominated by Project Manager.  An expected date should be included in the Project Plan.
D5
Demonstrated alignment of metadata records about Activities with institutional and external sources of truth (Research Office, ARC and NHMRC grant registries), with the authoritative description of the Activity sourced external to the metadata store, and with new researcher project added to the metadata through regular updates from the sources of truth.

Acceptance:   Integration with the ANDS records derived from the Grants Registries will be demonstrated by inspection (by CLO) of nominated examples of Activity records.  An expected date should be included in the Project Plan.


See updated criteria for this Deliverable
D6
Demonstrated workflow for registering new Collections in the university; this can include automated update, or semi-automated (notification-based).

Acceptance:    This will be demonstrated by a document description (with schematic) of the workflow that includes some form of alert or notification that a new collection has been, is being, or is about to be, created. An expected date should be included in the Project Plan.
D7

A software system to realise deliverables D1–D6 (and D8, D13–D14 if applicable), with robust storage and management of metadata.

Acceptance:  ANDS does not intend to assess software code already assessed or approved e.g. ReDBox, VIVO. A detailed diagram(s) of the working metadata store with associated use-case(s) will be used to assess the deployment by the ANDS Technical Assessment Group and will be shared with ANDS partners  (note - please insure that these diagrams are licensed as CC BY).
D8-D13
Optional Deliverables

Acceptance:  ANDS expects each institution to choose at least one optional deliverable. Progress of chosen optional Deliverables is expected to be included in the ANDS Progress Report Template.

Friday 13 July 2012

Metadata Stores Community News #5

  1. Welcome to the Metadata Stores blog. The purpose of this blog is to provide a national communication channel for the MetaData Stores Community. Please inspect the tab for Funding Rules as well as the comparison of solution schematics. If you would like to post to this space please contact Simon Pockley for author permissions.

    Screenshot of the Australian Libraries Gateway where you can look up your ISIL code

  2. Action #1: Please follow this link to instructions on how to check your ISIL code, contributor name. You will need to confirm both, as well as the contact person e.g. AU-QGU, Griffith University j.morris@griffith.edu.au - You can confirm by comment box, at the bottom of this post, or email to simon.pockley@ands.org.au.

    Action #2: Please also send a Harvest URL from which the NLA can retrieve your Party records. If you are not yet ready for this then please say 'not ready' or decide on the url that you intend to use.

    See Training below - questions - just ask...

  3. All TIM/Trove training modules are at: http://ands.org.au/training/trove/index.html. Modifications to TIM/Trove training Module 1: now split into 2 parts:
    • Module 1-A: Process for contributing party records to Trove and how to obtain an ISIL code. This module explains:
      • The process for contributing records to Trove
      • How to obtain an ISIL code (International Standard Identifier for Libraries and Related Organisations)
    • Module 1-B: Register with Trove and access TIM. This module explains:
      • How to register with Trove; and
      • How to access TIM ( Trove Identities Manager).
      • TIM Beta and Trove Test
      • TIM Production and Trove People and Organisations zone
  4. We now have 2 communities of practice who have agreed to regular Teleconferences: First the ReDBox collaboration, co-ordinated by Vicki Picasso (see contact list). Second, a VIVO Group co-ordinated by Simon Porter (see contact list). More detailed information about the working sub-groups of these communities will follow.

  5. A South East Queensland Metadata Stores Roundtable is scheduled for Thursday 19th July 2012 form 10:00am - 12:00pm. The agenda is reasonably open and the session will be informal to promote discussion.

    Note the venue will now be Room 712 of the QUT library (V Block), not 714 as originally advertised. For more, contact Andrew White [andrew.white@ands.org.au].
    • Introductions and update from each of the Metadata Stores Projects?
    • National level activity update from ANDS
    • Commonalities and synergies
    • DOI's
    • NLA Integration
    • Other topics

Friday 6 July 2012

Metadata Stores Community News #4 (19/06/2012)

Apologies for any cross-posting 1. Call for collaboration. At a round table in Sydney on the 25/05/2012 (Minutes available on request) collaborative groups were formed. You are invited to participate or form a group.
  • ReDBox collaboration: contact Vicki Picasso - Vicki.Picasso@newcastle.edu.au - A teleconference is pending.
  • Change Management: contact Susan Robbins - S.ROBBINS@uws.edu.au
  • Optional Deliverable 8: contact Neil Anderson - Neal.Anderson@sydney.edu
  • Integration with data capture: contact Peter Sefton - P.Sefton@uws.edu.au

2. QCIF agrees to provide ReDBox Software support to any Australian research institution that has or want to deploy ReDBox. Prtess to see schedule of fees and the terms and conditions.

3. Project contacts have now been included in the comparison. The NLA will use these contacts (please contact me if any detail or contact is not correct) Press to open Google Spreadsheet.

4. Featured question: What is the road map for updating these ARC and NMHRC Activity Records? ANDS is negotiating with NHMRC and ARC to provide an automatic process for updating these records (Coverage currently 2000-2010). This project is still at the early stages. In the meantime, anyone who needs to add new collections to a recent grant (e.g. approved in 2011) then please email Amir Aryani [amir.aryani@ands.org.au], and he will add the grant activity record to RDA, and give you the key to use as the related object.

5. Our latest featured profile is Flinders University - Press to see the Vimeo interview with Amanda Nixon.

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Flinders University successfully completed one Data Capture project and two Seeding the Commons Projects in 2011. As part of the Data Capture project, a metadata store running on ReDBox software was installed and delivered RIF-CS metadata covering all ANDS-funded Flinders projects to Research Data Australia. Flinders continues to support ReDBox, is represented on the ReDBox Product Reference Group and plays an active part in the ReDBox User Group.

The metadata store has been strongly identified within Flinders as a deliverable of the previous Data Capture project and as such, has not yet been integrated into University systems and workflows.

Flinders University seeks to automate the collection of research datasets metadata wherever possible. The Metadata Stores project will investigate two models for enabling this and implement the model best suited to Flinders needs. The first model involves the migration of data from 'sources of truth' into ReDBox. The second model would include the development of a Data Management Planning tool, similar to that in operation at Curtin University. Such a tool would be prepopulated with data from sources of truth. Successful completion of the Data Management Plan would trigger access to a collaborative research project site, and migration of metadata to ReDBox.

The project will produce a workflow and infrastructure to encourage the registration and description of research datasets. Depending on the model chosen, the outcome could be either an easy to use research data registration process that will give Flinders important management information for further work to develop support; or a data management planning workflow that will enable researchers to not only register and describe their datasets, but also arrange sound data storage.

Less tangibly, the project will raise awareness of good research data management practice amongst researchers and professional staff, increase capacity within the Library to support researchers in managing their data and provide the University valuable information about research datasets produced at Flinders that could be used to identify emerging research areas or opportunities for collaboration.

For more details please contact Amanda Nixon: amanda.nixon@flinders.edu.au.

Metadata Stores Community News #3 (24/05/2012)

Apologies for any cross posting

1. NLA announces the availability of the Trove Application Programming Interface.

... for everyone who likes to discover gems in Trove, a related VALA 2012 paper.

2. Building communities of interest - who is doing what in Metadata Stores.
Some of this information is changing. Please check data about your university and alert me to any updates.

3. New Training Module: How to obtain an ISIL code, register for Trove and access TIM.

4. Profile: Metadata Stores at the University of Adelaide (below).

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Background and context

The University of Adelaide has been involved in three ANDS-funded projects to date: one Seeding the Commons project and two Data Capture projects. All three projects have produced RIF-CS compliant records for inclusion in Research Data Australia. There is currently no institutional facility for centrally storing these and subsequent metadata records.

The need for an institutional metadata store has been identified through the University of Adelaide’s Research ICT Review conducted by IT Strategy and Architecture staff in 2011. Also in 2011, the ANDS-funded Seeding the Commons project ‘Showcasing Research Data’ elicited researchers’ requirements for a University research data repository and metadata store. The project report Responses to interviews: University of Adelaide research data repository and metadata store indicates strong support from the research community for the development of a repository and metadata store. The report is available at http://libguides.adelaide.edu.au/content.php?pid=202841&sid=1766886.

In April 2012 the University of Adelaide embarked on an ANDS and University co-funded Metadata Stores project. This project will realise the important first step in meeting the needs identified in the above mentioned report.

Project overview

The University of Adelaide is developing a semi-automated, institutional approach to the capture of metadata about research data collections from the University’s research community.

The University of Adelaide will utilise open source software to support a workflow for registering new collections. The workflow will leverage information already stored in the University’s HR and research management systems to describe researchers and research activities, thereby capturing rich contextual information to support the descriptions of research data collections, and minimising duplication of data entry.

Technology

The University of Adelaide will utilise open source software to support a workflow for registering new collections. Both ReDBox and Vivo are currently under consideration.

Contact

For more information contact Cathy Miller, Research Data Project Officer http://www.adelaide.edu.au/directory/cathy.miller

Project Manager: PY Wong

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Best wishes

Simon

Contributors