sword stories

SWORD Stories - Easy Deposit

Cutting Through Repositories’ Red Tape

Sarah Currier Consultancy | E-Learning * Resource Sharing * Web 2.0 * Metadata * Repositories

http://www.swordapp.org/

http://www.sarahcurrier.com/

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Presentation

• Why SWORD?• What is SWORD?• What does SWORD include?• SWORD conformance and APP• SWORD resources• SWORD story demos:

– SWORD Story 1: Drag-n-Drop– SWORD Story 2: Bulk Deposit– SWORD Story 3: Content Authoring– SWORD Story 4: Deposit Feeds as Learning Resources– SWORD Story 5: Take it to the Users

Open Educational Repositories: Share, Improve, Reuse | Edinburgh, 25-26 Mar 09 http://www.sarahcurrier.com/

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Why SWORD?

An educational technology vision un-realised:• Easy self-deposit by resource authors• Easy sharing of resources across collections, organisations,

communities

Barriers:• Prohibitive rights policies• Complicated deposit workflows• Interoperability standards for everything but deposit


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Why SWORD?

Solutions:• Prohibitive rights policies

– Open licensing solutions (e.g. Creative Commons)– Open educational resources movement

• Complicated deposit workflows– Repositories supporting:

• minimal self-deposit workflow stage;• supported by admin workflow stages;• skirting repositories interfaces altogether:

– drag-n-drop– interfaces within tools teachers use already

• Interoperability standards for everything but deposit– JISC Deposit API Working Group (2006)– ... became the SWORD project (2007)– ... followed by SWORD2 (2008)– ... Now SWORD3 is on: UKOLN support for ongoing work


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Why SWORD?

Solutions:• Prohibitive rights policies

– Open licensing solutions (e.g. Creative Commons)– Open educational resources movement

• Complicated deposit workflows– Repositories supporting:

• minimal self-deposit workflow stage;• supported by admin workflow stages;• skirting repositories interfaces altogether:

– drag-n-drop– interfaces within tools teachers use already

• Interoperability specs for everything but deposit– JISC Deposit API Working Group (2006)– ... became the SWORD project (2007)– ... followed by SWORD2 (2008)– ... Now SWORD3 is on: UKOLN support for ongoing work


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What is SWORD?

SWORD is:

• Simple Web-service Offering Repository Deposit• a profile of the Atom Publishing Protocol• a light-weight, open specification for remote deposit

of resources into repositories and similar systems


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What does SWORD include?

SWORD specification supports:• Remotely querying a repository for information about

collections available for deposit.• Depositing resources into available collections, with or

without specifying user log-in details.• Mediated deposit, where a user (e.g. a librarian) deposits on

behalf of another user (e.g. a teacher); the resources are only deposited to collections the teacher has access to, and are recorded by the repository as belonging to that teacher.

• Developer support functions: No0p and Verbose.


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SWORD conformance and APP

SWORD includes:

• a subset of elements from the Atom Publishing Protocol– focusing on POST

• mandatory and optional elementsNB: repositories may also support Atom Publishing

Protocol elements not included in SWORD, e.g. PUT (update), DELETE– none do yet, to my knowledge


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SWORD resources: clients

SWORD project clients

• SWORD open source reference clients:– Command line– GUI (desktop)– Web-based

• SWORD demonstrator Facebook client

http://www.swordapp.org/sword/demonstrators



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SWORD resources: reference

Reference implementations of repositories

• intraLibrary• DSpace• Eprints• Fedora• Test packages for deposit also available




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SWORD stories

SWORD Stories for e-Learning: Use Cases1. Drag-and-drop desktop tools2. Bulk deposit: sharing metadata3. Deposit from content authoring tools4. Drag-and-drop newsfeeds into repository5. Taking SWORD to the people:– SWORD Facebook App– OfficeSWORD: deposit straight from Microsoft Office– SWORD widget


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SWORD Story 1: Drag-n-Drop #1

intraLibrary Drag-n-Drop Desktop Tool• Simple batch file using SWORD client• Supports multiple file / IMS CP deposit• Supports deposit of metadata-only XML LOM files• Works with intraLibrary workflows/application

profiles/metadata templates• Requires set-up with correct

username/password/collection details


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SWORD Story 1: Drag-n-Drop #2

Keele University Desktop Tool• Took it forward for real users:– user-friendly dialog– security enhancements

Michael Debenham will be demo’ing in next presentation, after the break.


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SWORD Story 2: Bulk Deposit

Two large-scale public-sector educational resource providers wanted to share resources:

• NHS Education for Scotland Shared Learning Portal• IRISS Learning Exchange

Interoperability specifications:• Extract metadata nightly from IRISS LX using either:

– OAI-PMH, or– SRU

• Deposit it into NHS Shared Learning via:– SWORDOpen Educational Repositories: Share, Improve, Reuse | Edinburgh, 25-26 Mar 09 http://www.sarahcurrier.com/

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SWORD Story 2: Bulk Deposit

Let’s have a look: (search for “ethical” in both)

• IRISS Learning Exchangehttp://www.iriss.ac.uk/openlx/

• NHS Education for Scotland Shared Learning Portalhttp://www.sharedlearning.scot.nhs.uk/


http://www.iriss.ac.uk/openlx/

http://www.sharedlearning.scot.nhs.uk/

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SWORD Story 3: Content Authoring

Compendle Course Authoring Tool:• Easy creation of SCORM-compliant courses– Publish as zip file SCORM package– Publish as HTML– Publish to CD-ROM– Publish to repository (using SWORD)

• Round trip: can download resources from repository for inclusion in SCORM course– Using SRU behind search facility


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SWORD Story 3: Content Authoring

Let’s Have a Look:• NHS Scotland Shared Learning Portal

http://www.sharedlearning.scot.nhs.uk/ 1. Find resource from repository (using SRU)2. Publish SCORM course to repository (using SWORD)


http://www.sharedlearning.scot.nhs.uk/

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SWORD Story 4: Deposit Feeds

JISC-funded FeedForward tool:• Desk-top tool• Gather all your feeds’ results• Categorise your feeds• Decide which feed categories you want to see more or less of, dynamically• Collect individual feed results• Drag-and-drop collection as IMS Content Package, with:

Author, Title, Description, Keywords... in IEEE LOM Metadata in Package... into repository (using SWORD)

Let’s have a look ...http://getfeedforward.org/


http://getfeedforward.org/

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SWORD Story 5: Take it to the Users

5a: Facebook SWORD Client App

http://fb.swordapp.org/Let’s have a look ...


http://fb.swordapp.org/

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5b: OfficeSWORD

http://www.codeplex.com/OfficeSWORD

“A sample plug-in for uploading Office documents to a repository directly from within the Office applications using the SWORD protocol.”

“License: Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL)”


http://www.codeplex.com/OfficeSWORD

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5c: SWORD Deposit Widgethttp://www.rwidgets.co.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=wiki:sword

Let’s have a look at it in Netvibes (iFrame)


http://www.rwidgets.co.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=wiki:sword

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Contacts

SWORD Website: http://www.swordapp.org/Intrallect (for intraLibrary SWORD support and tools, and

NHS/Compendle projects): [email protected] University (for Keele SWORD desktop deposit), contact Boyd

or Jonathan:[email protected], [email protected] Sarah Currier Consultancy: [email protected] relevant references, resources and links:

http://www.elearning.ac.uk/features/sword NB: This SWORD article was the most popular yet on e-Learning

Focus: Downloads Feb 2009= 1045; March 2009 (so far)= 288Slides ©2009 Sarah Currier; available for reuse under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/scotland/


http://www.swordapp.org/

mailto:[email protected]




http://www.elearning.ac.uk/features/sword

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5/scotland/

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