Digital Object Repositories (Example of FEDORA).What-Is-In-It-For-PAWS?

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Digital Object Repositories (Example of
FEDORA).What-Is-In-It-For-PAWS?

• PAWS Meeting Series, Spring 2007
• Michael Yudelson

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Bibliography

• Payette, S., Lagoze, C. Flexible and Extensible
  Digital Object and Repository Architecture
  (FEDORA). Paper presented at the Second European
  Conference on Research and Advanced Technology
  for Digital Libraries (ECDL'98), Heraklion,
  Crete, Greece.
• Lagoze, C., Payette, S., Shin, E., Wilper, C.
  Fedora an architecture for complex objects and
  their relationships. International Journal on
  Digital Libraries, 6(2), 124-138

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FEDORA

• FEDORA - Flexible and Extensible Digital Object
  and Repository Architecture
• URL http//www.fedora.info/
• Project originated in 1990s
• Funding NSF, DARPA, Mellon foundation
• Technologies
• RDF, XACML, Kowari

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FEDORA Components/Services

• Repositories
• Mechanisms of storing/retrieving digital objects
  (DO)
• Index
• Mechanisms of DO discovery
• Collections
• Means of aggregating DOs
• Naming
• Conventions to register and resolve unique names
  of DOs
• User Interface
• Human gateway for DOs

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FEDORA Glossary

• Digital Object
• Atomic, UI-accessible unit of digital content
• Compare to
• Learning Object, Activity, Problem

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FEDORA Glossary (contd)

• Data Stream
• Data view on DO
• Each DO can have multiple DSs
• DO is represented by Data Streams
• E.g. DO bird can have following DSs
• Tiff image of a bird
• Dublin Core describing image
• Audio file with birds song

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FEDORA Glossary (contd)

• Disseminator
• An entry point to interacting with DO, an
  interface
• Primitive Disseminator
• Default entry point allowing discovery of other
  disseminators
• Disseminator serves DOs DS

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FEDORA Glossary (contd)

• Dissemination Types
• Composition (creation)
• DO structure discovery
• Content Layer Access (interaction with DO via UI)
• Every Disseminator is bound to Content Types

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FEDORA Glossary (contd)

• Content Type
• A set of requests specifying the behavior of a
  content
• E.g. for CT book
• getTOC, nextPagenextChapter
• For CT journal
• nextArticle, nextIssue

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PAWS LOs FEDORA Style

• LO Code Example
• DS1 Dublin Core signature (creator)
• DS2 Lines
• DS3 Annotations
• Diss1 Plane Code View (DS2)
• Diss2 Annotated View (DS2, DS3)
• CT showExample, showAntation
• Diss3 Social Navigation View - additional
  entities - user, interaction history
• Diss4 Multi-user Annotation (Sharon)
• CT addAnnotation, rateAnnotation

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Why FEDORA Is Interesting?

• Digital Repositories is one of the major views
  on digital content distribution
• With fully functional and working examples
• What are the other ones?
• Simple publishing on the web - outdated
• Web-services - discovery is a problem
• Digital Repositories ltgt DL
• SIS has LIS department
• Whatever goes on with DR should be of interest
  for us
• Dr. Spring was/is interested in deploying
  FEDORA

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FEDORA / DR Pros and Cons

• Pros
• DR is a framework of thought about DO, LO
• Native support for creation, storage, discovery
  and publishing
• Chance to reach a bigger community
• Funding opportunity!
• Cons
• No on-the-surface support for UM and Adaptation
• Cost of deployment and conversion?

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What Should We Do?

• Deploy FEDORA and convert all content?
• No
• Think of our current work in terms of DR?
• Yes
• Search for possible collaboration in distributing
  learning content?
• Hell yes!