I can tell you now that: there isn’t any time as the time now. Its the 2nd wave of the best year in South Africa after the Rugby World Cup... The FIFA World Cup is in our country from the 11 June to 11 July & its football frenzy this side of town. One of the places synonymous with Joburg is SOWETO. Starting the kick off on 6 June 2010 is the TSJS( THESIS Social Sessions, for those who are not familiar with acronym). A dope line up is full Of LOVE. Chuck D from the Deep Soweto stable will be punching them lines like there’s no tomorrow. We got Babu; a band from Cape Town, a new resident Dj who goes by the name of Springer, I’m sure he’s was knighted for a reason. Our guest dj for the evening is Hypenoid. Talking about LOVE: the “ I LOVE SOWETO” campaign is still embroiled in our love for beautiful things, the next concept is still ready for action soon. It’s an evening of great music & people.


So don’t miss if this post does not reach you in time. I don’t know where you at; if the whole world is here .Be in SA now or be square...

DSpace Add-Ons

The following are descriptions of a range of DSpace add-ons available to install which provide additional functionality to the software.

Commenting
The commenting feature brings informal communication capabilities to the DSpace environment. A threaded forum, or comments stream, can be attached to any web-page, community, collection, submitted item or e-person within DSpace. The add-on allows comments to be inserted by both anonymous users and authenticated ones while functionality for reviewing/moderating comments is also provided.

An example (in Portuguese) of comments appearing below a collection.

Compatible with DSpace 1.1 and 1.2 possibility of updating for DSpace 1.5.x


Controlled Vocabulary/Ontology
This add-on applies a subject classification system of the institutions choice to their DSpace instance. Once implemented the user chooses from the predefined taxonomy of keywords to describe items of information that are being submitted to the repository and that same taxonomy is used to find and access items held in the repository.

An example (in Portuguese) of a subject classification system in use.

Compatible with DSpace 1.1 and 1.2 possibility of updating for DSpace 1.5.x


Dublin Core Meta Toolkit
The Dublin Core Meta Toolkit gives DSpace administrators the ability to convert large amounts of information from their desktop database programs into DSpace compatible Dublin Core metadata. The toolkit provides a number of out-of-the-box database structures to ease data collection as well as enabling users to create custom converters for existing databases. The Toolkit is ideal for converting formats from Microsoft Access, MySQL and comma delimited value (CSV).

Compatible with DSpace 1.5.1


Embargo
Content submitted to a repository may be restricted by laws, policies, or contractual obligations that require the submitter not to publish or enable public access to the content for a period of time.This add-on allows DSpace administrators to build in functionality to handle embargoed items in the workflow. It allows for the metadata of the embargoed item to be indexed and viewed, but the full text of the item cannot be retrieved while the embargo is in force.

Compatible with DSpace 1.4.x, 1.5.x and 1.6


Format validator and virus check
This add-on provides rough-and-ready format checking by identifying that the file/bitstream extension matches formats verifiable by JHOVE. Currently DSpace accepts a deposit's file extension as gospel, so a user could tack a .txt extension onto a GIF and DSpace would assign the incorrect format to the file based on that incorrect extension. It also checks the file for the presence of viruses.

Compatible with DSpace 1.4.x and 1.5.x


Recommendation
This DSpace content-based recommendation feature automatically shows links to articles within the repository that a user is likely to be interested in by mapping items related to the document currently being visualized by the user. Similar to functionality seen on Amazon this feature can greatly improve user experience.

Compatible with DSpace 1.1 and 1.2 possibility of updating for DSpace 1.5.x


Request Copy
This add-on creates a semi-automated mechanism whereby would-be users can request and authors can email an individual copy of a full-text deposited within the repository whose full-text access privileges are set to restricted.

The purpose of this feature is to increase both the content deposited in an IR and its immediate usability by providing a way to accommodate the (frequently unfounded) worries of authors and their institutions about copyright infringement during any publisher embargo periods on public self-archiving.

The link is provided on all non-OA items and activates a form where the user requester must enter his/her email address and name, and may add a comment, and press a 'Request-a-copy' button. An email is sent to the depositor and the email message contains a token. Using that token, the author may reply, by just clicking in one of the two buttons available: 'Send Copy', 'Don't send copy'.

Compatible with DSpace 1.4.x and 1.5.x


Semantic Search for DSpace
Semantic Search allows intelligent search of DSpace content, using Semantic Web technologies and performs knowledge discovery on DSpace metadata. Semantic Search uses the science of meaning in language, to produce highly relevant search results.

Compatible with DSpace 1.4.2 possibility of updating for DSpace 1.5.x


Statistics
This add-on allows gathering, processing and presenting usage, content and administrative statistics from the repository. The system is based on components that can easily be configured, changed or extended, to respond to different information needs.

Compatible with DSpace 1.4.x and 1.5.x (JSPUI)


Tombstoning
The add-on allows a tombstone to be added when an item is withdrawn from the repository. The user selects from 3 reasons for withdrawing the item: 1. Removed from view by legal order; 2. Removed from view by the [authority doing removal]; 3. Removed from view at request of the author.

Compatible with DSpace 1.4.x and 1.5.x


Further details about this range of options are available here. Any WRN partner interested in discussing or investigating any of these DSpace add-ons should contact the team using the usual address wrnstaff@aber.ac.uk

initial rendering!

-2 1/2 weeks till' deadline for presentation of "book". this week i have to finish rendering(have ~6 figures to go) and prepare all the graphic boards. NEX WEEK IS FLATS WEEK!

today was FESTA DELLA REPUBBLICA ( an italian national holiday) and we had the day off-

so instead of resting- i slept 3 hours and headed to a friend's for a sketching part-ay!

below- see my initial figures for my fashion art project... under development :

trans-automa-sytosis

KALEIDO knits

KALEIDO KEEPS GOING...

here are my current knits(4 out of 7) and my almost final boards for the prints!

AND THE PRINTS.... i'm not re-posting all of the fixed boards because you've already seen the prints on the previous post and don't want to be repetitive...but this is what i chose for layout!

print/design development

here are some prints i started to play with during early research/pattern development:

love hundertwasser!

kaleido... prints +knits

here are my initial boards for

prints + knits w. repeats and colorways x kaleido project!

Statistical Evaluation

The WRN project team is currently looking in some depth at evaluating our project activities. We are concerned with gathering both non-numerical qualitative data to analyse about our activities (stories/opinions and narratives from our users) alongside some more quantitative statistical measures about repositories and their use across Wales.

Surprisingly, the collection of the statistical aspect of our evaluation data - something we originally envisaged as being the quick and easy stuff to generate - has proved to be quite problematic. Establishing a base line set of measures has been difficult with varying data coming out of everyone's systems and a lack of consistency in obtaining measures for central recording purposes. Even the most basic measure of all, i.e. how many deposits are recorded each quarter in each repository, can be difficult to obtain and we are only just managing to make this measure something we accurately record in 100% of the repositories across Wales.

So, while we hear lots of stories about the power of statistics and the help they can offer in making a case for a repository, it seems that we still have some work to do to convince people it is worth the effort of setting up robust statistical measures. We thought we'd try and address this by providing information about a selection of basic options open to most repository managers. The following information, from the Digital Repositories InfoKit, provides an overview of some of the most commonly employed methods of collecting statistics:

http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/infokits/repositories/management-framework/usage-statistics

Any WRN partner interested in reviewing their statistics and collection methods, or needing assistance in setting up any of the tools mentioned here, should contact the project team via the usual email at wrnstaff@aber.ac.uk