What has your digital repository done for you lately?
Imagine a scenario. A researcher in Bali, working on an international project investigating changes in world weather patterns takes a video of a particularly spectacular typhoon. She quickly uses her mobile phone to upload the video to the project's digital repository.
The video is immediately available in the news section of the project web portal. A London based team member with a specific interest in typhoons instantly sees it appear in their newsreader. He comments on the video on the project blog, so that Florida based colleagues can catch up with the news when they get to their desks later in the day.
Later in the day another colleague in Colorado downloads a podcast of the video to watch on his iPod on the way to work.
Charles Duncan CEO at Intrallect, a leading provider of digital repository software, takes up the story from here. "This scenario is not a future event. This type of interaction is happening now within our existing client base. For me, there are two particularly interesting facets to what is actually taking place. The first is that the digital repository itself is doing most of the hard work of communicating the new information out to selected audiences. And the second is that users are putting content into - and viewing content from - the repository without actually having to go to the repository itself, or even log into it."
It reflects the fact that the emerging generation of digital repositories are no longer simply a place to visit to find content of interest. They are now more clearly defined as a service that pushes highly relevant content out to specific audiences. And these audiences are able to decide exactly the sort of things they want to hear about and how they prefer to hear it. For example in their chosen newsreader, on selected blogs or wikis, via institutional web portals or even via commercial distribution mechanisms like iTunes.
"These changes are being driven by a combination of advances in technology and also the increasing expectations of users who are experiencing the convenience and usability of Web 2.0 type applications" Charles Duncan continues. "We took the view with intraLibrary, our own digital repository, that users should be free to use digital content in the tools they typically use day-to-day on their desktop. IntraLibrary Connect, the new web services suite for intraLibrary, was specifically designed to deliver repository services on top of almost any relevant application from a simple web browser, through podcasting to a sophisticated learning platform."
Recent developments of intraLibrary Connect include some work being carried out as part of the JISC SWORD project which is concerned with providing a standardised way of enabling various systems and devices including mobile phones to deposit content into repositories. The solution is based on the IETF's Atom Publishing Protocol(APP) and will be available in version 3.0 of intraLibrary in early 2008.
Intrallect is showcasing intraLibrary and the IntraLibrary Connect suite on stand A22 at Online Educa in Berlin between the 28th and 30th of November 2007 in Berlin. They'll also be depositing some images of the event in the Intrallect digital repository which needless to say will be immediately available via the Events section of www.intrallect.com.