Not so fast. I recently re-discovered some slides I took in 1984 and decided to scan them with an equally ancient Nikon slide scanner. The images linked below is what I got. Forgive the rather cliche subject choices, but I was ONLY 16 when I shot these. 28 years later, and these slides are still usable and, if I do say so, look pretty good. They were shot on Kodak film that is no longer produced.

• batch metadata editing
• statistics integrated into xmlui
• built in support for qualified dublin core in the OAI module (BONUS: ORE support!
• browser-based import and export of collections

Building the SandBox

Since I wanted to run this in a sandbox, I decided to start with Virtualbox running on a Apple iMac.  Into a new Virtual machine, I installed the latest Ubuntu, 9.10 or Karmic Koala.  Since I wanted to be able to ssh into the box, and access my DSpace installation from the outside world, I also setup port forwarding in VirtualBox using instructions similar to these.  For the impatient, to enable port forwarding of port 8080 on the host to port 8080 on the guest (called ubuntu), type these commands at the hosts command line:

VBoxManage setextradata ubuntu “VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/http8080/HostPort” 8080
VBoxManage setextradata ubuntu “VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/http8080/GuestPort” 8080
VBoxManage setextradata ubuntu “VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/http8080/Protocol” TCP

Installation of Ubuntu on a Virtual machine is an exercise left to the reader.

Installing DSpace 1.6

The install documentation is pretty good actually.  I was able to follow the  DSpace 1.6 Documentation to get everything to install.  Use apt-get to install any dependencies, like the JAVA JDK, maven, postgres, tomcat6, etc.  the only glitch was getting Tomcat to start (ouch, pretty big glitch)  It turns out that it’s not too hard to fix See This for DSpace 1.5, but the same principle applies.

Make sure Ubuntu is using the right Sun JDK, change the permissions to Tomcat’s files, and set the user that Tomcat runs as:

sudo update-alternatives –set java /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/bin/java

sudo chown -R dspace /var/cache/tomcat6
sudo chown -R dspace /var/lib/tomcat6
sudo chown -R dspace /var/log/tomcat6
sudo chown -R dspace /etc/tomcat6

Edit /etc/default/tomcat6 to set these parameters:
TOMCAT6_USER=dspace
TOMCAT6_SECURITY=no

Start tomcat6 and if you followed all the other installation steps correctly you should have a DSpace1.6RC1 instance running.

Next time: First impressions.

The website of a “collaborative effort by federal agencies formed as a group in 2007 to define common guidelines, methods, and practices to digitize historical content in a sustainable manner” I think this is something worth watching. Hopefully some meaningful frameworks can be developed as a result. I’m reminded of the early Federal Geographic Data Committee and their efforts to establish a base metadata standard and accompanying dissemination software. That resulted in a fairly robust set of tools and standards that helped the field handle an explosion of geospatial data in the early 90′s

I like that one of the first working groups deals with Audio-Visual materials, an area where there is a mish-mash of often conflicting standards, best practices, etc. The kind of clarity we now have with digital image standards would be really helpful in this area. The proposed table of contents of the “Recorded Sound Digitization Overview and Guidelines” Looks promising.

I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on their RSS feed.

My only criticism: They *really* need a clever acronym.

Now, according to the above press release:

The USGS is pursuing an aggressive schedule to provide users with electronic access to any Landsat scene held in the USGS-managed national archive of global scenes dating back to Landsat 1, launched in 1972.

And the’re doing it for free! If it’s not recent, and the standard recipe is ok, just click and order it. An email notification later and a quick download and you’re in business. If it IS recent, just download it. No waiting! That’s a far cry from the 30-40 day window to get a tape that OhioView (and every other user) faced when we first started

OhioView has since moved on to concentrate more on applications and research and development than on Data stockpiling. However, we still maintain an increasingly brittle data infrastructure with few resources available to maintain it, so this news is welcomed.

The thing is, OhioView was never meant to be the permanent solution to the problem of data distribution. It was a way to work around the obstacles that kept that data out of the hands of ordinary remote sensing folks. I think it’s been a phenomenal success at doing that, even spawning a national effort. But, it’s time to focus efforts on other more fruitful areas.

This is awesome news. To the USGS? My tired RAID arrays thank you!

UPDATE: Jury is still out on whether this will a) replace the need for terrain corrected data and b) be available with the needed 48 hr turnaround. Don’t spin those arrays down yet..

I’m not sure if I’m disappointed or relieved that the group “determined not to recommend any changes at the present time” in regard to copyright law and e-reserves. On the one hand, we are left with the same ambiguity that we have been dealing with forever. On the other hand, I’m terrified that the habit libraries have had of late to pay copyright clearance fees for fair use ereserves might have become an official recommendation. So, no news is potentially good news.

For the rest of the report, I’m not sure there is anything groundbreaking here. Judge for yourself though. The report can be found here: http://www.section108.gov/docs/Sec108StudyGroupReport.pdf

So, with the upgrade, we decided to switch over to authenticating against the University’s ldap server instead. This way, everyone would use their campus password and we just restrict access on username.

According to the CONTENTdm faq:

Does CONTENTdm support authentication via LDAP?
CONTENTdm relies on the underlying Web server for authentication services. The Apache LDAP authentication module enables authentication via LDAP. Consult the Apache/LDAP documentation for details.

Here’s how to do it on Apache2 Running on Debian Stable (etch)

1. Enable mod_ldap and mod_authnz_ldap

   a2enmod ldap
   a2enmod authnz_ldap

2. Create a new .htaccess file in /content42_install_directory/cgi-bin/admin/ that looks like this (customized with your ldap server URL):
   
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Server Admin"
AuthBasicProvider ldap
AuthLDAPURL "ldap://ldapserver/ou=users,o=mu"
AuthzLDAPAuthoritative off
Require valid-user


3. Make sure /contentdm_install_directory/conf/users.txt has a line with full admin privileges for your ldap username

   admin_username AC DC UP:$ALL BD ED AR DL CF RE

4. Now, force restart your Apache2 server
   /etc/init.d/apache2 force-restart

5. That’s it. Login and see if it works. If it does, you can add more admin or whatever users using the admin interface

UPDATE: If you want to allow LDAP authentication AS WELL as some non-LDAP usernames (like general purpose users, outside collaborators etc) Add this line to your .htaccess file

AuthUserFile = /path/to/htpasswdfile

and change the line that reads:

AuthBasicProvider ldap