Open Repositories 2010
Jul. 9th, 2010 12:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deborahYou know it's a good conference when you've sent your coworkers countless caffeine-fueled e-mail messages that read
I have this crazy WordPad document open full of notes and links, and I can't figure out which of them are e-mails to specific departments, which of them are notes for myself for further investigation, in which of them are totally awesome blogable exciting links to share with YOU, my loyal readers.
The keynote speech was about preserving scientific workflows, which mercifully is not something I think my department should be looking at yet. But talking about being formally compliant with linked data standards made me cringe at how much we aren't even thinking about such things. On the other hand, because of the way were using Fedora and encapsulating our various data streams, that would be relatively simple to implement once we decide to prioritize it. Which hopefully will be NOT NOW. (The post on how we take on far too many number one priorities can't happen right now because, oh, wait, way too busy.)
After the first general session, I ended up sending three consecutive e-mails to my coworkers saying, basically, "Wait, this would solve our Faculty Information System problem!" "No, wait, this would!" "NO WAIT THIS!"
I was very interested in what people have to say about dataset management, because that's one of the way-too-many-projects we are in the process of taking on. One thing I saw was how much work was going into making data flow directly from the lab or the desktop to the repository, with as much metadata as possible being automatically generated. I assume this is just to cope with the realities of how data producers work. On the other hand, right now most of the datasets I'm working with are humanities and social science data, and I'm not convinced the models map. Also, I wonder how these processes deal with field-collected and field-generated data?
I see two overarching themes of the conference: the first is Interoperability Is the One True Religion. No silo-like repository can solve everybody's problems. We are interdisciplinary and inter-institution, and we won't solve any problems and less our resources and data can be used by other tools, other resources, other datasets, etc. The second theme I see is Duraspace Helps Those Who Help Themselves. This is open-source software, and we all need to pitch in, and everything is going to be perfect in a modular happy world where everyone writes the tools they want and shares them in an open source community.
I AM SO BRILLIANT LOOK AT MY BRILLIANT IDEAor
WE ARE SO STUPID WHY DIDN'T WE THINK OF THIS BRILLIANT THING THAT EVERYBODY ELSE IS DOING. Or when you've made a blog post illustrating academic repositories as toddlers playing with a toy truck. I strongly suspect my coworkers wish I would lay off the café con Leche already.
I have this crazy WordPad document open full of notes and links, and I can't figure out which of them are e-mails to specific departments, which of them are notes for myself for further investigation, in which of them are totally awesome blogable exciting links to share with YOU, my loyal readers.
The keynote speech was about preserving scientific workflows, which mercifully is not something I think my department should be looking at yet. But talking about being formally compliant with linked data standards made me cringe at how much we aren't even thinking about such things. On the other hand, because of the way were using Fedora and encapsulating our various data streams, that would be relatively simple to implement once we decide to prioritize it. Which hopefully will be NOT NOW. (The post on how we take on far too many number one priorities can't happen right now because, oh, wait, way too busy.)
After the first general session, I ended up sending three consecutive e-mails to my coworkers saying, basically, "Wait, this would solve our Faculty Information System problem!" "No, wait, this would!" "NO WAIT THIS!"
I was very interested in what people have to say about dataset management, because that's one of the way-too-many-projects we are in the process of taking on. One thing I saw was how much work was going into making data flow directly from the lab or the desktop to the repository, with as much metadata as possible being automatically generated. I assume this is just to cope with the realities of how data producers work. On the other hand, right now most of the datasets I'm working with are humanities and social science data, and I'm not convinced the models map. Also, I wonder how these processes deal with field-collected and field-generated data?
I see two overarching themes of the conference: the first is Interoperability Is the One True Religion. No silo-like repository can solve everybody's problems. We are interdisciplinary and inter-institution, and we won't solve any problems and less our resources and data can be used by other tools, other resources, other datasets, etc. The second theme I see is Duraspace Helps Those Who Help Themselves. This is open-source software, and we all need to pitch in, and everything is going to be perfect in a modular happy world where everyone writes the tools they want and shares them in an open source community.
