Wednesday, February 2, 2005

McMillan installer problems #

We've been using the Gordon McMillan installer to convert the Scholar's Box into an .exe file so that others can run Scholar's Box without working directly off the source code and having a Python installation. Today, we ran into two problems in what had been a robust system: the encodings.idna library was not being picked up by McMillan. Solution: edit hook-encodings.py to include a reference to idna. (We figured this out by looking at When Things Go Wrong.) there seemed to case-sensitivity in module names: one file named xmllib.py and another named xmlLib.py. That caused problems for McMillan.  We solved this problem by renaming xmlLib.py to sbXmlLib.py   Posted by Raymond Yee on 2/2/05; 5:37:21 PM from the Unclassified dept. Discuss

Interesting proposal from the DKC at JHU #

A few days ago, I came across the Repository Proposal to Mellon: The Digital Knowledge Center (DKC) at Johns Hopkins University, working with the University of Virginia (UVA), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Sheridan Libraries’ network of international partners, proposes an architecture and technology research evaluation of repository software and services such as e-publishing, e-learning, and digital preservation. Each system will be evaluated against a series of use cases. The result will be a set of best practices and recommendations. These efforts will inform the current development of Fedora and DSpace, both of which are expected to be intensive over the next one to three years, result in a typology of repositories and repository users, and would allow us to begin, as part of this project, planning for an interface layer that would facilitate the integration of modules from various applications. Perhaps most importantly, this effort will create a greater understanding of the relative merits of these systems and provide a roadmap for enhancing interoperability among their services. While a Sakai-like effort may ultimately be worthwhile, major (and current) development efforts with both Fedora and DSpace argue for an initial analysis, evaluation, and planning phase in conjunction with both UVA and MIT.  So what is the DKC? Digital Knowledge Center: The Digital Knowledge Center (DKC) is the digital library research and development department within the Sheridan Libraries of the Johns Hopkins University. The DKC research agenda focuses on the ingestion of and access to materials in digital libraries. Our projects emphasize the development of automated tools, systems, and software to reduce the costs and resources associated with converting the vast knowledge within print materials into digital form. Fundamentally, the DKC R&D efforts emphasize a combination of automated technologies with strategic human intervention.   Posted by Raymond Yee on 2/2/05; 11:14:25 AM from the Unclassified dept. Discuss