Are Organization Unit entities heirarchical?

[alaw]

For better or worse, our DSpace 6.3 XMLUI repository, VTechWorks, is organized as a multi-level hierarchy of communities based on the organizational structure of the University, https://vtechworks.lib.vt.edu/community-list. I am trying to understand the options for migrating to DSpace 7. I have found the  DSpace 7 Wiki - Entities page, https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSDOC7x/Configurable+Entities, quite helpful.

The simplest option is to leave Entities disabled and to migrate our existing community structure as-is. That seems the choice taken for JEWLScholar at Middle Tennessee State, https://jewlscholar.mtsu.edu/community-list.

Iowa State Digital Repository, has enabled Entities, https://dr.lib.iastate.edu/community-list. The Academic and Administrative Units collection, https://dr.lib.iastate.edu/collections/90ee9f70-f4eb-4b4d-87c7-97cc3dccff56?scope=90ee9f70-f4eb-4b4d-87c7-97cc3dccff56, seems to contain all the Organizational Units in a very long simple list. However there seems to be some hierarchy for the OrgUnits, although it is not visible in the list. For instance, The Zoology and Genetics OrgUnit, https://dr.lib.iastate.edu/entities/orgunit/4a2929da-5374-4338-b62f-f5fd9e156ef9/full, has  dc.relation.ispartof=ag_hist, which is the Historical Departments, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences OrgUnit, https://dr.lib.iastate.edu/entities/orgunit/577eaec6-f3b3-43cd-92c3-ea9879d56152.

Since entities are Items and Items are not hierarchical is this dc.relation.ispartof a way to add a hierarchy to entities that normally would not be hierarchical?

I think we prefer to maintain a hierarchy, but only one, either communities or the OrgUnits. It seems like there might be advantages to having the hierarchy within the OrgUnits but I'm not clear whether that is possible. Also we would want a way to visually communicate that hierarchy, which is something that seems missing in the Iowa State list of OrgUnits.

I'd appreciate any insights about how entities might be used or avoided for representing this hierarchy.

Thanks,

Anne

[Fatih Güneş]

Hierarchical communities based on Org Structure is a common pattern in 6.x repos in Turkey. It has some pitfalls like too many communities and collections. It also results in a lot of mapping tasks on librarians. This was one of the clutters we aim to remove when upgrading Marmara University repository from Dspace6 to Dspace7.
We used 3 Entities (Publication-OrgUnit-Person). We created a list of Org Units just like in Iowa and created relationships between OrgUnit and People. People are also related with Publications as expected.
Currently, I cannot imagine how a hierarchical Org Units may be helpful, but we set 3 levels of Organization info in two aspects for Person objects as metadata to leave room for future improvements on hierarchy. If there becomes a requirement on reporting/viewing any data in hierarchy, then we can use these metadata to create new sub org units. Please see a person page in detail here:
https://openaccess.marmara.edu.tr/entities/person/3ac0f220-01e4-4bf4-99c8-401444467128/full
In above scenario, I believe that sub org unit levels must be different entities, just like Journal-Journal Volume-Journal Issue. The other case (OrgUnit to OrgUnit) would be too complicated for reporting.
We released the new Dspace instance on Ds 7.3 on 1 July 2022. Marmara University is one of the oldest government Universities based in Istanbul, Turkey with nearly 150.000 items in its repo. I welcome the community to check for our fresh Dspace 7.3 instance. Any feedback is appreciated.
https://openaccess.marmara.edu.tr

[alaw]

Fatih Güneş,

Congratulations on launching DSpace 7.3 in https://openaccess.marmara.edu.tr. The repository looks really nice. Thank you explaining your decisions for Org Units. In the full person page that you linked, https://openaccess.marmara.edu.tr/entities/person/3ac0f220-01e4-4bf4-99c8-401444467128/full, there are three local.person.academyunit and two local.person.orgunit fields.

dspace.entity. type Person
local.person.academyunit1 Fen - Edebiyat Fakültesi
local.person.academyunit2: Bilgi ve Belge Yönetimi Bölümü
local.person.academyunit3: Müessese Arşivleri Anabilim Dalı
local.person.orgunit1: Rektörlük
local.person.orgunit2: Kütüphane ve Dokümantasyon Daire Başkanlığı

It looks like the value for local.person.academyunit1 matches that for the name of the OrgUnit, https://openaccess.marmara.edu.tr/entities/orgunit/df770084-d2be-475f-ac3f-54e02bb45a72 listed in the relation.isOrgUnitOfPerson field.

relation.isOrgUnitOfPerson: df770084-d2be-475f-ac3f-54e02bb45a72
relation.isOrgUnitOfPerson.latestForDiscovery: df770084-d2be-475f-ac3f-54e02bb45a72

Are these metadata fields related to entities or potential entities?

Thanks,

Anne

[Fatih Güneş]

Dear Anne,

Thank you for your kind words.

As you have discovered, local.person.academyunit1 corresponds to an org unit, which is also traceable by the relation. We set other 4-5 units (for some other people there are local.person.orgunit3 metadata) for future enhancements of entities, especially, hierarchical org relation you mentined in your first email. 

Best regards,

Fatih