Page 127 - Building Digital Libraries

CHAPTER 5

Each of these questions should be carefully considered and weighed against
the potential pitfalls and benefits for outside users. Of the three questions,
the ability to give up some control over the content in one’s digital reposi-
tory is likely the most difficult one. Given the care and thought that often
goes into the creation of a digital repository, it’s understandable for an orga-
nization to want to “protect” its brand and its content. Digital repository
builders should consider, however, that this ability to provide remove-access
mechanisms is what the current Web 2.0 and future Web 3.0 frameworks
are built on. The ability to dynamically query and repurpose content is a
powerful tool for all users of a digital repository. What’s more, information
organizations can set an example to their commercial vendors in regard
to open access for digital information. As a whole, the information access
community continues to work with their vendors, which are data aggrega-
tors with traditionally closed publishing models like LexisNexis or Elsevier,
to provide an unmediated form of access to their content. Some vendors
like OCLC are actively undertaking projects to provide content available
through RESTful-based APIs, while other vendors still need some gentle
nudging. The information community can be a role model of sorts, by
making their own data available with as few access restrictions as possible.

Summary

When building or considering one’s digital repository platform, careful
thought should be taken regarding all aspects of the platform’s implementa-
tion. As previous chapters have stated, a digital repository will require new
workflows, new acquisition models, and new responsibilities from your
organization’s information technology departments. And while it might be
tempting to simply let the repository platform guide your decisions relat-
ing to metadata and metadata access, one must resist this. Aside from the
content, the metadata entered into a digital repository is the single most
important part of the digital repository. And in many cases, it’s likely the
most valuable component of the digital repository, given the large invest-
ments that go into creating metadata and the value that outside users and
data harvesters place on that metadata. As such, digital repository builders
should weigh their available options, selecting from the myriad of metadata
schemas currently available the schema that best suits the needs of their
organization, its users, and the bibliographic description of the repository’s
content.
Additionally, digital repository builders need to consider how much
access and how truly available they wish the content of their repositories
to be. Opening one’s digital repository beyond the walls of the application
platform allows other services like search engines or users to search, har-
vest, or integrate data from one’s digital repository into a different context
or workflow. It can enable content users to create new and exciting ser-
vices or “virtual collections” that a repository owner would be happy to be

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