EPRINTS AS THE CARDINAL SCHOLAR INSTITUTIONAL

REPOSITORY ATBALL STATE UNIVERSITY

Bringing an Open Source Institutional Repository to the Ball State University

Communityas Cardinal Scholar (CS)

Bradley Faust, Assistant Dean LITSBall State University Libraries

CARDINAL SCHOLARVision: The Ball State University Cardinal

Scholar institutional repository (IR) system provides an online destination for archiving, preserving and storing intellectual property created by faculty and others at Ball State University. Cardinal Scholar promotes Ball State University's intellectual work to a worldwide audience and advances open scholarly communication.

IOLUG Fall Program

DISCUSSION POINTS IR system investigation, review and

determination Our decision to use EPrints 3 - why? Implementation issues with EPrints 3 Local customization of EPrints 3 How is Cardinal Scholar doing today?

IOLUG Fall Program

IR SYSTEM INVESTIGATION – REVIEW – DETERMINATION

Consideration of CONTENTdm as possible IR solution Lack of open deposit process Collection based organization of assets

Comparison of IR systems available at the time Why were other IR systems/solutions not

selected? License fees Technical issues Functionality

IOLUG Fall Program

DECISION TO USE EPRINTS – WHY? System Considerations

EPrints written in Perl Apache web server, MySQL components Accessible and well documented code Active development and user communities

Cost Considerations No initial license fee – open source

Functional Considerations

IOLUG Fall Program

IMPLEMENTATION OF EPRINTS AS CS

Successful operation of EPrints 3 on Fedora Core Linux platform for several months

Successful user experiences testing EPrints 3 Successful installation and operation of a EPrints

3 beta version on a Windows based test server Successful customization of EPrints 3 system on

Windows Successful installation and operation of a EPrints

3 development version on a Windows based production server

IOLUG Fall Program

CS - FINAL LAUNCH TIMELINE Built production Windows EPrints server - Nov

2007 Testing

Windows test system – 1st week Dec 2007 Windows production server – 2nd-3rd week Dec 2007

Soft launch – no publicity (mid Dec 2007) Solicited user feedback and tweaked the system

(mid Dec - mid Jan) Began publicizing CS (Jan 2008) Needed just a few things from the Computer Center

IOLUG Fall Program

IOLUG Fall Program

COMPUTER CENTER ASSISTANCE Assign system a domain name

cardinalsholar.bsu.edu System security scan to evaluate server

configuration Provide internet access to the CS server through

the campus firewall Acquire SSL certificate for system ($100) – to

protect logon credentials and improve overall security

Review informational pages for consistency with university computing policy

IOLUG Fall Program

CUSTOMIZATION OF EPRINTS, DONE Informational pages – heavily modified Deposit process pages – heavily modified New accounts default to ‘editor’ status Added left hand navigation column Added Depositor Status field to deposit process Combined ‘deposit now’ and ‘make live’ buttons

into one single function Added Browse by Division and by Creator feature Modified taskbar format and content

IOLUG Fall Program

VANILLA EPRINTS 3 HOMEPAGE

IOLUG Fall Program

CARDINAL SCHOLAR HOMEPAGE

IOLUG Fall Program

CUSTOMIZATION OF EPRINTS, TO DO Reorder required fields to display together on

deposit pages Implement LDAP support to tie CS user accounts to

campus domain accounts Further develop strategy for supporting small group

access – plan to use shared user accounts initially Further develop functionality around local depositor

status field Custom reports for OAI harvesting and other

administrative work (user tracking, usage reports)

IOLUG Fall Program

HOW IS CS DOING TODAY? Repository has been running for 10 months Manually moved selected digital assets from

the test repository environment to Cardinal Scholar

Populated production CS with: University Archives documents other library and university documents

Vacant Archivist slot slowed progress this year Currently have over 150 digital assets in the CS

system

IOLUG Fall Program

OSS/FREE APPLICATIONS IN USE Firefox browser Zotero citation add-

on Adium Chat Client

(Mac) VLC media player

(Mac) Audacity Audio Client RegexBuilder (for

PHP)

KompoZer Web editor Apache web server MySQL database Perl/PHP EPrints 3 Javascript MediaWiki TILT

IOLUG Fall Program

THANK YOU Connect to Cardinal Scholar

cardinalscholar.bsu.edu Contact Information

765 285-8032 bfaust@bsu.edu Bradley Faust

Assistant Dean for Library Information Technology Services

University Libraries Ball State University Muncie, IN 47306