[OLPC library] [Olpc-open] Working on a repository system for Nepal's OLPC pilot

[Bryan Berry]

Are Dspace and Eprints not as scalable?

What about Greenstone? I haven't read much about it but it popped up on
my radar this afternoon.
On Thu, 2007-12-13 at 12:00 -0500, Samuel Klein wrote:
> Bryan,
> 
> Fedora is a good choice.  It's pretty flexibile, supports versioning
> of items and streams, and is being actively developed.  And it is 
> particularly scalable.
> 
> http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2005-03-18-a.html#repositoryFeatures
> http://fedora.info/wiki/index.php/FedoraWiki:Community_Portal
> 
> (It also runs the tibetan & himalayan digital library: 
> http://www.thdl.org/index.php :)
> 
> Ed, to your point, there are some features important to the XO environment 
> that major repository systems don't provide out of the box; but those can 
> be provided these on top of existing repositories (including those at 
> existing libraries whose choices we can't change).
> 
> SJ
> --
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> 
> On Thu, 13 Dec 2007, Bryan Berry wrote:
> 
> > Ed that's a great idea, to set up the use cases and to use RoR or
> > Django . You could use those frameworks for the UI but you really need a
> > mature and __scalable__ back-end for the library, particularly when a
> > real e-library will have an immense amount of distibuted storage,
> > metadata, and enhanced search capabilities. I don't there is any single
> > ruby 'rail' or django 'snippet' that can provide all of those :)
> >
> > On Thu, 2007-12-13 at 08:11 -0800, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> >> Bryan Berry wrote:
> >>> I have put a lot of work these two weeks into building a prototype
> >>> library for Nepal's pilot of OLPC. It is my understanding from an e-mail
> >>> conversation with S.J. that OLPC hasn't decided on a repository system
> >>> for the library. For the time being I am much more concerned about the
> >>> back-end of the library than the user interface. I don't think that it
> >>> will be incredibly hard to design a simple user interface for kids to
> >>> search a repository. The harder part is to find a powerful back-end that
> >>> will be able to accommodate our needs as they grow over time.
> >>>
> >>> I have posted an image of the prototype on to OLE Nepal's blog
> >>> http://nepal.ole.org/home/?q=node/104
> >>>
> >>> I think this current UI will be good for teachers. I will need a much
> >>> simpler one for kids.
> >>>
> >>> After some cursory research, there appear to be three leading
> >>> open-source repository systems
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Eprints
> >>>
> >>> Dspace -- used in OpenCourseWare, and
> >>>
> >>> fedora -- not to be confused with Fedora Linux
> >>>
> >>> I will also be testing out the DiVA repository set up by SF State some
> >>> time next week, thanks to Sameer Verma. I had to get something up and
> >>> running by this Friday (Dec. 14th) per a self-imposed deadline.
> >>>
> >>> Being the incredibly lazy person that I am, I did not go to the trouble
> >>> of installing and testing each one of these repositories. Instead I
> >>> spent half a day reading reviews, blog posts, and news group discussions
> >>> comparing various repository packages. After reading this evaluation of
> >>> the leading three repository systems and watching this video, I decided
> >>> to try out fedora.
> >>>
> >>> After many painful hours I got fedora set up. Actually, it is quite easy
> >>> to set up fedora, which is a pure web service. I found installing the
> >>> most popular UI Fez rather difficult to get set up. I see this
> >>> decoupling of service and UI as a strong positive in fedora's favor. We
> >>> need a very simple kid-friendly UI for kids, a more advanced one for
> >>> teachers, and a very advanced one for the people who will load materials
> >>> into the library.
> >>>
> >>> I would love to hear from someone who actually knows about repository
> >>> systems and can explain to me the benefits of one system over another. I
> >>> will be in the US for 5 weeks starting Dec 16th and one of my goals will
> >>> be to really understand online libraries so I can build an awesome one
> >>> for Nepal.
> >>>
> >>> I have put a rough install guide on how to set up fedora with the Fez UI
> >>> on Ubuntu. There are already install guides for fedora and Fez but I
> >>> encountered several problems during the install.
> >>>
> >>> So, I would love to hear from people who actually know about these kinds
> >>> of systems.
> >>>
> >>> By the way, e-Pustakalaya means "e-Library" in Nepali. The title in the
> >>> upper-left of the screenshot reads the same in Devnagari script.
> >>>
> >>
> >> Is there a set of "requirements/use-cases" for such a repository
> >> somewhere? It might be easier to build something specifically for the
> >> XO, rather than modifying one of the current ones, using a rapid web
> >> application development toolset like Rails (Ruby) or Django (Python). I
> >> don't know any Django developers, but I do know a lot of Rails developers.
> >
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