1. Exploring IR Technologies
IR Workshop Managing Scholarly Assets in Institutional Repositories: Sharing Experiences Among JULAC Libraries 24 February 2006, HKUST Library
Exploring IR Technologies
Ki Tat LAM
Head of Library Systems
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Library
Last revised: 23 February 2006

2. Contents DSpace Software SRW/U, Usage statistics, OpenURL
Cross-Searching Technologies
Search engines – Google
OAI-PMH - OAIster, Scirus, HKIR
HKIR
Standardization
Author names; subjects; document types; metadata schema
Document deposition versus linking
Research Assessment Exercise
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

3. DSpace Software
Jointly created by MIT Libraries and Hewlett-Packard Company [
Open source software – released since 2002
Adopted by HKUST Library for its IR since February 2003 [
Also adopted for HKUST’s Digital University Archives – migrated to DSpace in October 2004 [
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

4. DSpace Software [cont.]
HKUST’s Electronic Journals Online searching service will soon be migrated to DSpace [
Adopted by CUHK for its IR (known as SiR) since mid-2004 [
Adopted by CityU for its IR since 2005 [
Will be adopted by HKIEd for building its IR
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

5. IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

6. IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

7. IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

8. IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

9. IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

10. IR Software and Services
Open Source Software
DSpace
GNU EPrints
Fedora
See OSI Guide to Institutional Repository Software [
Commercial Software
VITAL from VTLS Inc. – powered by Fedora
DigiTool from Ex Libris
Symposia from Innovative Interface Inc.
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

11. IR Software and Services [cont.]
Commercial Hosting Services
Digital Commons from ProQuest – powered by the bepress platform
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

12. DSpace at HKUST As of 19 February 2006,
Home URL:
IR Software: DSpace Version 1.3.2
System Software: Fedora Core 4 Linux; Tomcat 5.0;
JDK1.4.2
Server: Intel Pentium 4 3GHz; 3GB RAM;
80GB hard disk
Content: documents from 42 departments
Usages: Documents were accessed ,467 times since October 2004
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

13. DSpace at HKUST Customizations Document submission form Add item form
CJK support
Authentication and authorization
SRW/U interface
Collection and Usage statistics
OpenURL linking
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

14. DSpace at HKUST [cont.] SRW/U Interface
Search and Retrieval for the Web (or by URL)
Base URL: [
Alternative way of searching the repository - using standard web services
Allows search service providers to issue a federated search to various IRs and deliver the search results in their own GUI interface
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

15. Response to the following SRW search request:
nancy%22&operation=searchRetrieve&maximumRecords=1&startRecord=1...
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

16. XSLT-converted response to the following SRW search request:
nancy%22&operation=searchRetrieve&maximumRecords=1&startRecord=1...
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

17. DSpace at HKUST [cont.] Size of the Repository[
Compiles in real time the number of items, collections and communities in the Repository
Top 20 Most Access Documents [
Compiled every month against the Tomcat web access logs
Excludes access by most robots
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

18. DSpace at HKUST [cont.] OpenURL
All documents deposited in the HKUST IR must meet the open access criterion
Two solutions to link to non-open access documents were explored:
Direct linking to the documents as found in the library subscribed databases
OpenURL for Link Resolver
OpenURL approach was adopted because:
More persistent than vendor-provided URLs
Transparent to what databases locally subscribed
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

19. DSpace at HKUST [cont.]
One disadvantage of the OpenURL approach – what if the in-house link resolver fails to find a target link? e.g.
Host of the document is not OpenURL capable
Database not subscribed by the library
Target not profiled by the local link resolver
Developed a data entry interface to assist in the construction of OpenURL
Demonstration:
Sample item with OpenURL
Staff interface for OpenURL construction
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

20. Document deposited in the Repository is a pre-published version
Click on this image to launch HKUST’s WebBridge link resolver to locate the published version
Document deposited in the Repository is a pre-published version
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

21. Click on this link to retrieve the article hosted on Elsevier’s ScienceDirect platform
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

22. Click on this link to view the full-text of this article
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

23. Build OpenURL Edit Item View Item OpenURL constructed
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

24. Click this button to create this OpenURL fragment
Click this link to test the OpenURL
Check INNOPAC for bib record and then auto-insert the ISSNs to the form
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

25. Cross-Searching IRs Cross-searching approaches
If the IR site is open for robot access, documents are very likely available in major search engines, such as Google and Yahoo.
Indexing services harvest IR metadata using OAI-PMH protocol:
OAIster from University of Michigan [
Scirus from Elsevier [
HKIR – an experimental system by HKUST Library [
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

26. Document indexed by Google
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

27. Document indexed by Google Scholar
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

28. Document indexed by OAIster
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

29. Click this link to search HKUST IR on Scirus
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

30. Draft Only Scirus search results page will look like this
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

31. Cross-Searching IRs [cont.]
OAI-PMH
A protocol developed by Open Access Initiative for harvesting metadata from distributed repositories
Most of the IR software, including DSpace, are OAI-PMH capable
Indexing services such as OAIster are OAI data harversters
IRs are OAI data providers
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

32. OAI-PMH’s XML output in response to a “GetRecord” request
OAI-PMH “GetRecord” request by URL: /1805
OAI-PMH’s XML output in response to a “GetRecord” request
Metadata in Unqualified Dublic Core metadata schema (oai_dc)
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

33. HKIR
HKIR - an experimental system developed by the HKUST Library to demonstrate the features of harvesting and cross-searching the scholarly and research output from the Hong Kong UGC funded institutions [
Powered by the DSpace software
Equipped with OCLC’s OAIHarvester2 software for harvesting OAI metadata from IRs
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

34. HKIR [cont.] Databases harvested (as of 22 Feb 2006):
CUHK SiR [70 records]
CityU Institutional Repository [425 records]
HKUST Electronic Theses [1,681 records]
HKUST Institutional Repository [2,126 records]
HKU Theses Online [13,583 records]
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

35. Possible add-on to aid UGC’s research assessment exercise
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

36. Click on this link to go to the record in CUHK’s IR
This record was harvested from CUHK’s IR and it is in their Fine Arts collection
Click on this link to go to the record in CUHK’s IR
A sample HKIR record
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

37. A sample HKIR record showing fields labeled in qualified Dublin Core elements
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

38. HKIR supports OpenURLs harvested from local IRs
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

39. HKIR [cont.] Standardization Issues Author names standardization
Subject analysis
Free vocabulary versus thesaurus
Adopt same thesaurus among institutions?
Document types
Adopt same set of definitions among institutions?
Metadata schema
Adopt same metadata schema?
Use oai_dc schema for OAI harvesting?
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

40. Author names standardization
Author name assigned by HKUST
Author name assigned by CityU
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

41. Document type assigned to the same article are different
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

42. HKIR [cont.] Problem on loading harvested oai_dc metadata
oai_dc is the most popular metadata schema used by OAI data provider tools, e.g.
Virginia Tech’s VTOAI - used by HKUST and HKU in their Theses databases
OCLC’s OAICat - used by DSpace
oai_dc does not support qualified Dublin Core
The qualified DC fields stored in local DSpace have to be scaled down to simple DC when exporting records to OAI harversters
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

43. HKIR [cont.]
Mapping metadata back to qualified DC for loading to HKIR is challenging
Need to develop a HKIR version of schema that takes qualified DC
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

44. Metadata in oai_dc schema as received by the OAI harvester
dc:dentifier.citation in local IR
dc:dentifier.uri in local IR
dc:dentifier.openurl in local IR
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

45. HKIR [cont.] Document deposition and linking
Deposit all open access documents to the local IRs
If published version is in restricted access, then deposit the pre-published version and provide a link to the published version
Use OpenURL for linking as long as the document is in a database that can be reached via link resolvers
Otherwise, add the vendor-specific link to the metadata record
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

46. HKIR [cont.] Research Assessment Exercise (RAE)
Assess the quality of the research output of the academic staff
Assist in assessing the research fund allocation to the funded institutions
UGC is conducting RAE 2006 [
Each eligible academic staff submits a maximum of six publications
Assessed by subject panels
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

47. HKIR [cont.]
High potential of utilizing the cross-institutional repository to assist academic staff to submit items and prepare reports
Go electronic – no longer need to collect submissions in printed format
IRRA (Institutional Repositories & Research Assessment) - a project that support RAE through IRs, for the UK RAE in 2008 [
Developing software for EPrints and DSpace to facilitate RAE tasks
DSpace version to be available in summer 2006
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

48. HKIR [cont.]
If we have a cross-institutional repository for Hong Kong IRs, then we may consider adding support for RAE to the system
Next round of UGC RAE is in 2011or 2012
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

49. Sample screen from an IR showing users selecting items for RAE submission [source:
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library

50. Thank You!
IR Workshop – Exploring IR Technologies – K.T. Lam, HKUST Library