ePrints.FRI
The institutional publications database of the Faculty of Computer and Information
Science, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia
Faculty of Computer and Information Science
University of Ljubljana
Miha Peternel
F@IR-PUBLISHING and F@IR-READING UNICA SEMINAR
VIENNA, NOVEMBER 25-26, 2004
Initiative for an institutional archive Prof. Dr. Franc Solina (September
2002) Open Archives Initiative ePrints software
from University of Southampton, UK Bibliographical databases in Slovenia
COBISS (main bibliographical database) SICRIS (research publications database) SciX (science exchange) in development
Why did we choose ePrints? Configurability Programmability
Open source, standard Linux software Widespread usage (147 known archives) Support (authors, mailing lists, users) Multilingual (interface & data) Web based interface OAI compatible
Setting up an ePrints server Hardware configuration Software configuration Security Backup Logging
Hardware configuration Off the shelf PC server
Pentium 4 2.4GHz 512K RAM
2 hard disks in a RAID configuration
2 network ports (public & secure) RedHat Linux Operating System
What does ePrints software do out of the box? It’s ready made to archive typical
scientific publications of an academic institution.
It provides web based interfaces for self archiving, editing, administration, and search functions.
It provides user management and email subscriptions.
Extending and customizing ePrints Subject areas Custom document types / subtypes Custom attributes (department, lab…) Multilingual attributes Default attribute values (facilitate
input) Web interface customization Google search
Language issues ePrints as a multilingual archive
Nearly any field can be multilingual We do store multilingual data, if available
ePrints as a multilingual interface Users can choose interface language Requires translation of templates
International character sets in practice Minor issues with Slovenian čšž in names
Phases of deployment Test install Test configuration Server install & configuration Departmental test Final configuration Initial deployment (2 months / 1 year) Deployment & maintenance
Access statistics = a rich source of information How often are our documents
accessed? (ranking) Where are they accessed from? Where are the referrers to our
archive? What search phrases were used to
find our papers?
People issues with self-archiving An anecdote I have to do it AGAIN Why is it not done automagically
from my home page by automated tools? Veracity of the deta Integrity of the data
What’s the benefit?
Carrots & sticks to motivate usage Generate documents that users
need Documents for the library Personal bibliography Departmental bibliography
Promote the work automatically OAI interface Promotion of the archive itself Archiving & Backup
Self-archiving institutional archives need sticks Beyond not-invented-here
in computer science Departmental chiefs must enforce
usage Researchers tend to be too focused on
getting worthy publications, they ignore other ways of dissemination
An anecdote: a visit from Microsoft Research
A live demonstration of usage Publishing a new document Administration of a new document
(editing)
Live demonstration
Access patterns Traffic analysis
AwStats Webalizer
Traffic reports (live)
The reach of ePrints.FRI Harvested by several OAI search
engineshttp://oaister.umdl.umich.edu/o/oaister/http://liinwww.ira.uka.de/bibliography/Misc/eprints.fri.uni-lj.si.html
Harvested by CiteSeer Special status of ePrints archives
discussed with some search engines (Yahoo)
Usage patterns Department
Provides exact & cumulative data Some users like automation and backup
Faculty A place to publish student theses A single point for search and backup Preservation of electronic documents of
researchers that leave institution Students
A research tool for thesis examples Access to some book (pre)prints
Towards more usage There is value for the institution Encouraging self-archiving and
open archiving Promote use to other departments Improving ePrints.FRI
Adding little features users like (BibTeX…)
Conclusion Software for institutional open
archives is freely available It requires very little investment in
terms of equipment, publishing, editing and administration costs
It is up to institutions to mandate archiving in institutional open archives (and use collected data, access statistics…)
Thank you [email protected] ePrints.FRI.uni-lj.si www.eprints.org
