Strategy Checklist:
Thinking through strategy in a logical order should save time and effort later on. The following checklist is intended to provide a useful starting point to aid discussion and decision making.
- Be clear on what you want to use your repository for:
- What is its purpose? For example; a permanent archive, a workbench tool supporting the creation of research, a research database, a tool for statistical analysis and reporting? These purposes are not mutually exclusive, but it is important to be clear about what functions the repository has as this will inform what kind of versioning issues will come up.
- What type of object will your repository deal with? Is this mainly just one kind of object (such as only e-theses or only images), or will it contain multiple formats that will be related in different ways?
- Consider how your repository may grow in the future to include different remit or content with different requirements.
- Give serious consideration to the different issues and therefore solutions required for different kinds of digital format.
- Be realistic about the complexity of material and of links contained within the repository. See the 'Managing Different Types of Digital Object' section for more detail.
- Make sure that the repository software suits your requirements and the purpose of the repository.
- Upgrade this software when possible and use any version control options that are built in. Most of the major repository software packages available are updated and improved regularly, and major advances are planned with some already in place in 2008 in how these packages deal with versioning. VIF recommends upgrading to newer releases wherever possible if the package you use has improved its functions for versioning. More information about this can be found in the 'Linking of Records' section.
- Understand the purpose and utility of the five pieces of essential version information.
- Agree what versioning solutions will work best in the repository to make this information transparent to end users. See the 'Embedding Information in an Object' page for more detail.
- Ensure that the solutions selected incorporate both embedding the information in the object as well as within the metadata.
- Ensure consistent application throughout the repository.
- Make the information explicit. Define and explain to the end user what terminology you have used, for example, do not ever just use a 'date' field; define what date is displayed.
- Understand how your software links records and expresses relationships.
- Examine the FRBR structure.
- Understand whether you are able to adopt one of the application profiles, and whether more than one is applicable.
- Make explicit what the repository's conception of the 'work' level is (see FRBR section for explanation).
- Store version metadata where possible.
- Use metadata sharing standards that allow rich version information to be harvested from your repository.
- Consider whether more information could be captured upfront or whether there is a more effective way of capturing it. The 'Ingest' section and the 'Deposit Workflow' sections will provide further detail.
- See the 'Policies' section of the framework for more detail.
- See the 'Advocacy' section of the framework for more detail.
- Make your decisions explicit. For example, publish user accessible versions of your policies, explain how linking works in the repository, define any terms you use.
- The key to making your systems easy for researchers to understand and use is consistency and transparency. If you cannot be consistent for any reason, be explicit about what you have done.
Next Section:
Please read the next section on
Policies.