Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR)
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/1885/6614
The aims of the Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR) Project were to establish a centre of excellence for the management of scholarly assets in digital format.
Online collections of scholarly materials are bringing about a quiet revolution in the way researchers work. Researchers have faster easier ways of finding and analyzing research materials. New modes of research and new research methodologies are all now possible. APSR was a partnership that aimed to promote excellence in building & managing these collections of digital research objects.
The Partnership received Federal Government funding to assist Australian researchers with research information management. To this end, APSR conducted outreach and educational programs and undertakes collaborative development of systems and tools.
The Partnership was an eclectic one including major research universities, the National Library of Australia, and APAC (Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing). This reflected the broad nature of the issues faced and the capabilities required in managing Australia’s research data and scholarly information in digital format.
APSR worked closely with research communities, information professionals, technical staff, and higher education policy makers on a series of development projects, surveys, publications, seminars, and training workshops. The Partnership aimed to help create the systems required for managing data and information in a research environment and simultaneously to increase the capability of Australian researchers to do so.
http://apsr.anu.edu.au/about.html
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ANU Archive Item Open Access ANU DSpace Dissemination ServiceRaftos, Peter; Monus, LeoObjects stored in a digital repository may be accessed, rendered or displayed in any number of ways. Images may be searched for and then viewed online; or they may be printed or downloaded as high-resolution for layout in a print magazine. Film may be streamed; data tables may be queried in situ; humans may search the repository or machines may interrogate it. There are multiple repository applications and multiple 'levels'� of repository: long-term archives, CVS trees, streaming servers (to name just a few). Clearly, there is a need for a standardised object or template which any dissemination mechanism could expect to receive when requesting content from a repository. Philosophically, this concept is the flip side to the APSR RIFF Submission service.ANU Archive Item Open Access AONS System Documentation(Australia: Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR)) Curtis, JosephAONS (Automated Obsolescence Notification System) is a system to analyse digital repositories and determine whether any digital objects contained therein may be in danger of becoming obsolescent. It uses perservation information about file formats and the software which supports these formats to determine if the formats used by digital objects are in danger. The information used is gleaned from various registries (PRONOM1 and LCSDF2) and stored in a MySQL3 database. AONS will then periodically check the contents of the repository for formats in danger of becoming obsolescent. When the repository is found to contain such formats a notification report will be sent to the repository manager responsible. AONS supports multiple repositories with fully independent scheduling. Currently AONS only supports the DSpace4 digital repository; however, the interface between the repository and AONS is simple and well defined and it shouldn't be too hard to extend to other repositories in the future.ANU Archive Item Open Access APSR Image Workflow Final Report(Australia: Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR)) Gutsche, TristanThe project was setup to develop a process for submission, sustainable storage, and reproduction, of image collections within the RIFF environment, which will provide the higher education community with greater resources and capabilities for the utilization of digital media. The project will address the issues of, mapping image collection metadata to the standard NLA METS profile, as well as and fundamental presentation functionality for user interaction with image collections. Initially image collections where to be referred to as “Image Albums”, however this was latter dropped by the NLA committee. To demonstrate the presentation of image collections, templates where developed in Manakin by ANU, and the iSpheres repository system developed a connector allowing access to Dspace objects and metadata via web services. By this means, objects from Dspace and other repositories, may be presented throguh custom web and desktop applications. The project was scheduled to be complete in 2007 and will be demonstrated at the Clever Collections conference in November.ANU Archive Item Open Access APSR Road Map 2007(Australia: Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR)) Burton, AdrianThe purpose of this APSR Road Map 2007 (Preliminary Document) is to serve as a framework for more detailed planning. More comprehensive planning documents are envisaged for Q1 2007. The roadmap document has three parts: A. Looking Ahead B. Action C. Approaches It begins with a scan of the horizon to map the important landmark needs of the foreseeable future (A). This then leads to sketching out important areas of activity (B) and appropriate approaches (C) to best respond to those needs.ANU Archive Item Open Access APSR Sustainability Issues Discussion Paper(Australia: Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR)) Bradley, KevinThis paper was initially envisaged as a higher level document intended for the steering committee through the executive officer. However, the formation of the expert committee at the December steering committee meeting suggests that a task based document would be more appropriate for that forum, referred to them by the steering committee. The final outcome of the process for which this discussion paper was written is a task based plan that will support the APSR aim of elucidating the critical issues of the access continuity and the sustainability of digital collections. It may be utilised to fulfil the requirement of an issues and strategy paper as outlined in Milestone 1 in the APSR Project Specification 12 February 2004.ANU Archive Item Open Access Australian Framework and Action Plan for Digital Heritage Collections: Response to the Collections Council of AustraliaBurton, Adrian; Henty, MargaretANU Archive Item Open Access COSI-Framework v1.0 Documentation(Australia: Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR)) Blanden, JamesThe COSI-Framework is a PHP/PostgreSQL web application framework which has been designed and built to provide shared and consistent functionality across the projects of the Australian Partnership For Sustainable Repositories (APSR) Collection Services and Infrastructures (COSI) initiatives of 2007. More information about these initiatives can be found at the APSR web site http://www.apsr.edu.au/currentprojects/index.htm#cosi.ANU Archive Item Open Access Criteria for Choosing Repository SoftwareTaylor, ChrisANU Archive Item Open Access Demetrius RQF Preparedness(Australia: Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR)) Raftos, PeterIn 2004, Digital Resource Services (DRS) was involved in the RAQ, an external review of ANU's performance designed to inform the University and the Australian public about the standing of the ANU in the international academic community and about the best ways of developing the ANU for Australia's longer term national interest. Research academics from every discipline represented at the ANU were required to make available to assessment panels a selection of their research output. There were more than 7,500 items (including 3,500 papers), submitted by 1,500 academics. As this was a one-off exercise and public access was not a consideration, access to the documents was limited to the assessors. Document metadata were entered by the depositors, by hand. The documents were stored, mostly as PDF files, in an instance of the DSpace software managed by DRS. The software's internal access control mechanisms were adequate to ensure that depositing academics had access to the Collections within DSpace they needed, and assessors were also able to log in and access the appropriate Collections. In both cases, the lists had to be drawn up manually.ANU Archive Item Open Access Demetrius RQF PreparednessRaftos, PeterANU Archive Item Open Access Dreaming of Data: The Library's Role in Supporting e-Research and Data Management(Australia: Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR)) Henty, MargaretThe increasing focus on eResearch comes with an increasing focus on data management, data use, data sharing and data re-use. This presents a challenge to research institutions as they decide where the responsibility for all of this data lies. Libraries have long had a role in managing text-based materials in the digital environment, as can be seen by the rapid take up of institutional repositories and many library ventures into electronic publishing of different kinds. There are many who see that the library has a significant role to play here, and several Australian university libraries are already actively engaged in data management in its broadest sense, as are state libraries, the National Library and others. This paper examines the capabilities and skills required within research institutions as they implement the organisational and cultural change which will be needed. It is based on two surveys conducted in 2007. The Skills for eResearch Project undertaken by APSR included interviews and surveys of a range of people associated with the eResearch agenda. The findings suggest that the provision of appropriately skilled personnel will be key factor in moving forward, and that the skills required go far beyond the technical. At the same time, there are currently many barriers to the conduct of eResearch and these will need to be addressed in order to develop new services supporting institutional capability. The Data Management Survey was conducted by three Australian universities in late 2007 and looked at the data management practices of researchers. The results show both positives and negatives, and point towards areas for improvement.ANU Archive Item Open Access Fez/Fedora Support for Submission and Dissemination Services as part of the APSR RIFF FrameworkBennett, Andrew; Kortekaas, Christiaan; Kuhn, Lachlan; Smith, MatthewANU Archive Item Open Access Field Helper 2007 report on activitiesHayes, StevenANU Archive Item Open Access Functional Checklist for Digital Repositories in the Research Quality Framework (RQF)(Australia: Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR)) Burton, AdrianFrom the institutional perspective the planned introduction of a Research Quality Framework will have wide ranging ramifications for research, research administration, and research information infrastructure. This document concentrates on the likely issues for the third area, research information infrastructure. Other issues, such as the role of the research office, the formation of research groupings, institutional research strategies, etc, are out of scope for this paper. All we can currently say about the RQF must be carefully qualified because the details have not yet been finalised. This may work in our favour; it may still be possible to effect the nature of the final RQF implementation. At this point it would be sanguine to acknowledge that the we don't know how centralised the RQF will be. Will the RQF be running its own mega repository of "submitted" items? Or will "submitted" mean submitted to the institution's repository and the reference submitted to RQF? The latter one would think, but then will part of the RQF process involve DEST harvesting directly from the repository or will the university's research office mediate? We take as a given the importance of an institutional repository in the process of information management of the RQF process. The introduction of the RQF is a strategic opportunity for institutional repository managers and developers. It is a chance to make the IR even more relevant to the critical mission of the university. That said, it is still possible that the initial RQF will not involve digital repositories at all and will run on hard copy submissions. Assuming that most universities choose to manage their assessable research information through institutional repositories, the repository software and the accompanying repository services will be called upon to support the institution's response to the RQF. The required functionality for such support is discussed herein. This paper only tries to propose an indicative checklist of the functional requirements of a repository wanting to support RQF. Further discussion will elaborate upon this list, which is offered at this stage to stimulate discussion.ANU Archive Item Open Access Investigating Data Management Practices in Australian UniversitiesHenty, Margaret; Weaver, Belinda; Bradbury, Stephanie; Porter, SimonIt was in this environment of changing expectations for the provision of data management infrastructure that three Australian universities decided to investigate the needs of their own communities. The initiative came from The University of Queensland (UQ) and was taken up by The University of Melbourne (UM) and the Queensland University of Technology (QUT. All three are universities with an increasing focus on eResearch, and a desire to improve their support infrastructure. All three recognised that a first step towards this goal was to find out more about the current practices and training requirements of their research staff.ANU Archive Item Open Access Migrating eprints.org data to a Fez repository(Australia: Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR)) Weaver, BelindaThis document records the process of migrating eprints.org data to a Fez repository. Fez is a Web-based digital repository and workflow management system based on Fedora (http://www.fedora.info/). At the time of migration, the University of Queensland Library was using EPrints 2.2.1 [pepper] for its ePrintsUQ repository. Once we began to develop Fez, we did not upgrade to later versions of eprints.org software since we knew we would be migrating data from ePrintsUQ to the Fez-based UQ eSpace. Since this document records our experiences of migration from an earlier version of eprints.org, anyone seeking to migrate eprints.org data into a Fez repository might encounter some small differences. Moving UQ publication data from an eprints.org repository into a Fez repository (hereafter called UQ eSpace (http://espace.uq.edu.au/) was part of a plan to integrate metadata (and, in some cases, full texts) about all UQ research outputs, including theses, images, multimedia and datasets, in a single repository. This tied in with the plan to identify and capture the research output of a single institution, the main task of the eScholarshipUQ testbed for the Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories project (http://www.apsr.edu.au/). The migration could not occur at UQ until the functionality in Fez was at least equal to that of the existing ePrintsUQ repository. Accordingly, as Fez development occurred throughout 2006, a list of eprints.org functionality not currently supported in Fez was created so that programming of such development could be planned for and implemented.ANU Archive Item Open Access ORCA Collections Registry Reports(Australia: Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR)) Blanden, JamesThe Online Research Collections Australia (ORCA)-Registry software is a product of the Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR) Collection Services and Infrastructures (COSI) initiatives of 2007. The ORCA-Registry is a PHP/PostgreSQL web application designed to be housed within an instance of the COSI-Framework. More information about ORCA can be found at the APSR website http://www.apsr.edu.au/orca/index.htm. This document describes the ORCA-Registry software only. It does not describe specifics of the software framework that is required to house it (see the COSI-Framework documentation for more information); issues relating to governance of an instance of the software; or provide guidelines or information for those who wish to provide data to an instance of the software.ANU Archive Item Open Access Preservation of TeX/LaTeX Documents(Australia: Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR), 2006-07-21) Barnes, IanANU Archive Item Open Access Preservation of TeX/LaTeX Documents(Australia: Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR)) Barnes, IanI will address the following questions in this report: 1. Is TeX/LaTeX an adequate long-term preservation format? 2. Is there a viable process for converting TeX/LaTeX into DocBook XML + MathML? 3. How good is the support for MathML (for rendering to the screen by web browsers, and for rendering to PDF by XSL-FO processors)? I will also cover some other related issues, including the possibility of outsourcing preservation of TeX/LaTeX documents to existing archives like arXiv[13], and using the TeX typsetting engine to produce good quality PDF renditions of XML documents, including those with mathematical content in the form of embedded MathML. I will finish with some recommendations.ANU Archive Item Open Access Preservation of word processing documents(Australia: Australian Partnership for Sustainable Repositories (APSR), 2006-07-16) Barnes, Ian