How to use External Links instead of Bitstreams? (Just like OAI with metadata-only option)

[Bruno Nocera Zanette]

Hello, folks!

How can i manually add external links instead of uploading files?

I want to add some itens to an existing collection that only have metadata and to use external links instead of uploading a new bitstream. Most of these are links to bitstreams of other instances of Dspace.

It is the exact same thing that happens when using OAI Harvester with metadata-only option activated, but without having to configure an entire collection with OAI.

I've found in another post of "Dspace Community" how to configure Dspace to not require to upload a bitstream, but it doesn't fully solve my question.

Is it possible to do it?

Thanks!

[Fabricio Costa]

Hi, Bruno.

We did that in JusLaboris (Brazil) by adding a new condition to Mirage2 theme, item-view.xsl

For example, if an item doesn't have a bitstream, the thumbnail gets its link from a given metadata. In our case, first "dc.relation.uri". Additionally, a message with the same link appears below thumbnail, where bitstream link usually is:

https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12178/32260

Fabricio Costa

[Bruno Nocera Zanette]

Hey, também sou brasileiro!

Eu ajudo na manutenção do repositório digital da UFPR.
Só vou responder em inglês para respeitar as regras da comunidade.

Thanks for the answer!
I'm trying to find a way to that without changing the theme, because it's necessary only for one small community in our repository. But if i can't find how to do that i'll study your modifications to do the same. It seems to work pretty well!! 

[Bruno Nocera Zanette]

Re-Posting my answer on dspace-commuity forum here just to give my final solution.

Based on your answers i've discovered that ORE is nothing more than a special XML bitstream, that define bitstreams as links. So i decided to write a Python class to create a "Simple Format Archive" packager using OAI. The packager receives a base URL and a handle and then make requests to OAI to gather item's metadata (DIM) and item's ORE information (ORE) and create a ZipFile with those infos. This ZipFile is ready to be uploaded to a repository using "Batch Import (ZIP)" option.

The code is in very early-development stage but it already does the job. Later it can become a real python extension, to accept a list of handles and different base url at once.

I've deployed it on heroku free plan just to test it. It can be accessed at:

https://dcorepackager.herokuapp.com/

And the source-code is stored at:

https://github.com/BrunoNZ/dc-ore-packager

Feel free to test it, and please let me know of any bug or suggestions.

[Fabricio Costa]

(E aí, Bruno. Bom encontrar brasileiros por aqui")

Hi, Bruno,

Good to see that you manage to solve your problem.

Based on your answer, I had some ideas in order to change our link behaviour. Now I realize that a ORE.xml file can support any external links. 

I think I will try change our approach, maybe using an ORE file to handle the external links.

Best regards and thanks for talking about your solution.

Fabricio Costa

P.S: I'm not an IT guy. I am a librarian. Sorry for any "simple" comment.