KAPTUR conference, London, March 2013
Posted: March 7, 2013 Filed under: events | Tags: CKAN, EPrints, jiscmrd, RDM policies, technical analysis, ukdcc Leave a comment
KAPTUR – one month to go…
Posted: March 2, 2013 Filed under: monthly reports, project posts | Tags: CKAN, EPrints, jiscmrd, RDM policies, ukdcc Leave a commentThis is our update for KAPTUR for February with one month of the project left to run!
WP1: Project Management
- The project team had meetings on 31st January and 28th February in order to both report and monitor progress of outstanding tasks.
- The Project Manager has begun final reporting procedures for JISC.
WP3: Technical Infrastructure
- The Technical Manager has completed a case study on the technical aspects of the project which will be presented at the KAPTUR conference on 6th March.
- The Project Officers have uploaded visual arts research data to the EPrints pilot repository.
- The Technical Manager has resolved issues with the CKAN pilot repository and will be completing development work on this soon.
WP4: Modelling
- The fourth and final RDM policy was approved by The Glasgow School of Art’s Research and Knowledge Exchange Committee on 13th February.
- The four policies will be made available through DCC in due course and will also be linked to from the KAPTUR Outputs page.
- This work package is now closed.
WP5: Training and Support
- The Glasgow School of Art training workshop took place on 31st January with the assistance of Laura Molloy, JISCMRD Evidence Gatherer. The presentations are available here: http://www.slideshare.net/kaptur_mrd/tag/gsardmtraining
- The fourth and final training workshop took place on 22nd February at Goldsmiths, University of London with assistance from Kerry Miller of the Digital Curation Centre. The presentations are available here: http://www.slideshare.net/kaptur_mrd/tag/goldrdmtraining
- The first draft of the KAPTUR toolkits has been completed using Xerte Online Toolkits. They will be completed by the close of the project and made available both online and through JORUM for use and re-use.
WP6: Evaluation and Sustainability
- The four case studies from the Project Officers as well as the additional fifth case study from the Technical Manager have been completed and are being edited for online publication.
- A template for the KAPTUR Business, Financial and Sustainability Plans was circulated to the Project Officers for use in their institutions.
- The Glasgow School of Art have already completed a good draft of their Business Plan using the template.
- The Project Manager is awaiting feedback from the final workshop, the conference, and another short survey before completing the Benefits’ reporting.
WP7: Dissemination
- The Project Director attended the Reskilling for RDM workshop at University of the West of England on 29th January
- The Technical Manager attended the CKAN workshop in London on 18th February – a blog post is available: https://kaptur.wordpress.com/2013/03/02/ckan4rdm-workshop/
- The Technical Manager also attended the Research Data Management Storage Requirements Workshop in London on 25th February: http://rdm-storage.eventbrite.co.uk/ This was hosted by JISC, DCC and JANET.
- On Monday 4th March, Lynda Agili, Head of Research Office, and Andrew Gray, the KAPTUR Project Officer, both from Goldsmiths, University of London will present at an ARMA event.
- The KAPTUR end-of-project conference will take place on Wednesday 6th March. It is fully booked: http://kapturmrd.eventbrite.co.uk/
KAPTUR one year on – (2/3)
Posted: October 22, 2012 Filed under: monthly reports, project posts | Tags: case studies, DataCite, DataStage, EPrints, jiscmrd, RDM policies, The British Library, toolkits, training plan Leave a commentThis is our update for the end of the twelfth month of KAPTUR; we are just past the two-thirds mark! For an overview of the past year, please visit the KAPTUR Prezi.
WP1: Project Management
- The Project team have been in contact by telephone and email; four colleagues will be attending the JISCMRD Programme meeting this week in Nottingham.
WP3: Technical Infrastructure
- The Technical Manager has written a blog post with more detail here: Working in Stages with DataStage and Figshare
- The project partners have provided feedback on KAPTUR’s DataStage pilot site.
WP4: Modelling
- The four policies are going through several rounds of committees and are to schedule; this has been the focus of the past month.
- In addition the University of the Arts London’s draft policy is available online: http://www.arts.ac.uk/research/data-management/
WP5: Training and Support
- The KAPTUR training plan is now publicly available.
- The Pinterest links have been linked to via UAL’s RDM pages and DCC’s Marieke Guy’s excellent blog post on The value of video in getting the RDM message across
- The GSA Project Officer taught MRes students about research terminology covering research data and promoting the KAPTUR project; this will feed into our training materials. Blog post about this: Getting to grips with research terminology
- The Project Officers have been in contact with their Research Offices to arrange a half-day training session for Research Office staff and Librarians in order to pilot the KAPTUR training materials.
WP6: Evaluation and Sustainability
- The Project Officers have received a short Word document and model costings template (Excel) and will be piloting this within their own institutions.
- Detailed case study templates have been created and shared with the Project Officers. The case studies will be presented at the end-of-project conference on Wednesday 6th March 2013.
WP7: Dissemination
- The Project Director and Project Manager met with DataCite at The British Library to discuss the licence and other aspects of using DataCite.
- The UAL Project Officer’s presentation to Library staff is available on SlideShare.
Working in Stages with DataStage and Figshare
Posted: October 20, 2012 Filed under: technical | Tags: DataFlow, DataStage, EPrints, Figshare, technical analysis 1 CommentWith thanks to Carlos Silva, Technical Manager, for the following blog post:
The KAPTUR Technical Analysis report (PDF) recommended the piloting and further investigation of two different systems: DataStage to EPrints; and Figshare to EPrints.
Figshare to Eprints
Some of the advantages of integrating Figshare with EPrints are:
- The upload tool to Figshare allows multiple uploads using WebDAV and javascript.
- The Figshare team is currently working on a desktop uploading tool to allow users a streamlined process of submission.
- Feedback from the Steering Group was that the user interface of Figshare was attractive and clear; it is already being used by researchers to store and manage research data and therefore the integration with EPrints would enable many institutions (as EPrints is the major repository platform in the UK) to encourage researchers to better manage their research data and then upload selectively to an institutional repository for publication.
Following telephone and Skype chats with the Figshare team a requirements document was created and shared with project partners and Simon Hodson. The idea was to create an API which would be free for use by any institution who wanted to link Figshare with an EPrints repository using the SWORD 2 protocol. Additional features included the development of the desktop uploader; a custom user interface design; back-end application development; and custom user accounts for the KAPTUR project partners to test the system.
Currently, negotiations are still in progress and further thought has been given to the infrastructure and pricing models that will eventually have an impact when adopting a commercial approach with technologies such as Figshare and that if not considered could lead to an unsustainable solution for the sector.
DataStage to EPrints
The second pilot recommended by the report was to link DataStage (from the JISC funded DataFlow project* with EPrints. The technical implementation of this pilot started in June 2012 when the Technical Manager set-up DataStage and DataBank on a local machine; demonstrated this to the Project Officers (in June) and the Steering Group (in July) and started collecting feedback on this. After testing the DataFlow software internally, the team started to explore the best way of linking DataStage with EPrints directly.
The advantages of integrating DataStage with EPrints are:
- DataStage offers the potential of being institutionally based, and therefore tighter control.
- It provides a structured metadata collection interface.
- It also provides flexibility when uploading, for example with the integration of a shared drive which uses a popular storage approach similar to Dropbox but with the advantages that the data is held on the institution’s servers.
Proposed integration of DataStage with EPrints, July 2012 (SlideShare)
The Technical Manager through VADS’ host institution – the University for the Creative Arts – set-up a test environment for the KAPTUR project (http://kaptur.ucreative.ac.uk). Test accounts have been given to project partners and an online feedback form set-up to capture this information.
To test the DataStage connection with EPrints, a test repository with the latest EPrints version (3.3.10) was needed in order to use the SWORD 2 protocol; this was created (http://kaptur_repo.ucreative.ac.uk).
Both systems have been tested separately, and both systems have performed well.
The DataStage software should allow users to submit entire folders as ‘packages’ to a repository using the SWORD2 protocol, however currently there is an issue** with the default version of DataStage and no transfers can be done on any other repository other than into Databank (the DataFlow project’s repository).
As well as contacting DataFlow and EPrints, the Technical Manager has been in contact with various colleagues across the sector, from the Centre for Digital Music at Queen Mary, University of London (see blog post about connecting DataStage with DSpace) to other colleagues who have also looked into connecting DataStage with EPrints such as the UK Data Archive, University of Essex and the RoaDMaP project, University of Leeds.
At this point there are the following conclusions:
- EPrints 3.3 is required in order to have SWORD 2 fully enabled [completed].
- EPrints have tested the SWORD 2 protocol successfully with other EPrints repositories, however connectivity with other types of repositories hasn’t been tested by EPrints yet.
- The DataFlow project manager replied saying that there were issues with the SWORD submission on the DataStage side, however they were expecting to come up with a workaround for their V 1.0 release [It is noted that Richard Jones will be presenting about DataFlow at the JISCMRD Nottingham programme event so this is hopeful!!].
- The lead DataStage developer mentioned that SWORD2 was envisioned to fully work with DataStage and EPrints when it becomes available and that previous versions of DataStage managed to work okay with EPrints, however due to new developments and enhancements at either end some changes in the DataStage side need to happen before it fully complies and can connect with EPrints.
*DataFlow was funded by JISC, under the University Modernisation Fund, from June 2011 – May 2012 to further develop a prototype out of the JISC-funded ADMIRAL project (2009-11).
KAPTUR Steering Group meeting, HEFCE, 18th July
Posted: July 26, 2012 Filed under: meetings, technical, training | Tags: DataFlow, DataStage, environmental assessment, EPrints, Figshare, HATII, jiscmrd, KRDS, RDM policies, SlideShare, ukdcc 1 Comment
View from HEFCE, 12th Floor,
Centre Point, London. Photo: MTG
Key points from the meeting:
- It was noted that there was diversity among the four institutions in terms of drafting the RDM policies – we can still collaborate and learn from each other – but the approach is necessarily different at each institution.
- University of the Arts London are really benefiting from their participation in the DCC University Engagement programme; the UAL Project Officer is working an extra day per week on this and as a result has been able to revisit and extend the KAPTUR Environmental Assessment through 20 x 5 minute telephone calls which will be followed up with 1 hour in-depth interviews with visual arts researchers.
- There was discussion about a definition for visual arts research data and how this might be constraining, but was needed at the same time in order to be able to move forward with the RDM policies. A working definition was presented to the KAPTUR Steering Group 3 months ago in response to questions raised by the UAL working group: http://www.slideshare.net/kaptur_mrd/kaptur-news06
- Feedback on training/support and the KAPTUR toolkits: recommendation to create KAPTUR videos about visual arts research data instead of hosting workshops at each institution (we already had plans to re-use content from the previous JISCMRD programme e.g. http://www.youtube.com/user/GUdatamanagement). I still think the face-to-face aspect of the workshops would be useful, but maybe there is a way to incorporate shorter sessions and use the videos as part of these? We will discuss at our next project team meeting in September.
- The Steering Group liked the Figshare interface and thought it would be appealing to visual arts researchers as well as easy to use; there were lots of questions about both DataStage and Figshare.
- Feedback on Sustainability: recommendation to get an idea of costs of the proposed technical infrastructure to include estimates of staff time required for ongoing support of the systems.
The presentations are available from SlideShare.
The Triumphal Quadriga or Horses of St Mark, facade of St Mark’s Basilica in Venice.
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license
It was great to welcome Laura Molloy, Researcher at the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (HATII), to the Steering Group meeting. After the meeting Leigh, Laura and I met to discuss the project from the perspective of her role as JISCMRD Evidence Gatherer. As well as discussing impact and gathering evidence about benefits, Laura also came up with the concept of the chariot (KAPTUR project) being pulled by four horses (our four institutions). I really liked this idea of the race and also the need for collaboration to be well-matched in order to make the project successful.
KAPTUR 