[Dspace-tech] Display order of multiple files

[Ann Devenish]

Dear Colleagues:

We have loaded a small number of books into DSpace (ver.1.2.2).
Generally, these consist of multiple files (perhaps as many as 30)
linked to a single metadata record.

It was our understanding that in the simple and full item record
displays, the files would list in the order that they had been
submitted, i.e. 1-10 .... however, this appears not to be the case, as
they are displaying in reverse order, i.e. 10-1. The reverse order puts
the file containing the index of the book at the top of the display and
file containing the title page at the bottom; not quite what we had in mind.

Any solutions to our dilemma that you can recommend are much appreciated.

Kind regards,
Ann


--
Ann Devenish
WHOAS Project Manager
MBLWHOI Library
Woods Hole, MA 02543

Phone: 508.289.2865
Fax: 508.457.2156

[Jonathan Bell [jpb]]

I was interested to read this as it seems that ordering the submission
of multiple files is the only way of ordering the content in DSpace (so
that submitting chapter one's file before chapter 2's shows that chapter
one comes first). I checked this on our test installation and the files
appeared to be listed in the right order. This is on DSpace 1.3.2 so
maybe it's a problem with older versions.

Is there any way of specifying the order of multiple content files and
also of specifying that file B has content that is a part of file A's
content (such as an illustration)?

Thanks,
Jon

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[Tansley, Robert]

Currently the order is non-deterministic - i.e. just the order the
database query happens to give the results back.

Rather than sorting in the order they were received, a better method
might be to sort by filename. That way, as long as the files are named
in order (e.g. page01.pdf, page02.pdf etc) they'd always appear in the
correct order. This would be a minor change to the DSpace code, one
that anyone with a basic knowledge of Java & SQL should be able to make.

Of course, what we really need is a decent way to capture the
information properly, which METS provides, but getting the information
from users in the first place with a decent UI is also a challenge...

Rob

[Jonathan Bell [jpb]]

Hi,
I've been looking into this area as we are writing our own METS
crosswalk file to incldue all the metadata our partner wants, and this
includes a structMap.

It does seem that some way of specifying the order of files is
necessary, but I'm not sure that expecting files to be named in
lexicographical order is the way to go - page01 coming before page02 is
fine for a scanned document but less easy for a longer born digital work
(such as a thesis) divided into chapters and related sections. Clearly
intro will then come after chapter01, chapter02 etc and appendixA will
come immediately after the abstract (!), unless you get the submitter to
rename the files.

It seems a simpler approach (from the user's point of view) to ask for
files to be specified in order, preferably also allowing the order to be
changed on editing the submission. No idea how complicated this is to
implement, but one possible approach is to have the ordering of the
files specified in the database. I imagine that the table that maps
bitstreams to item could add an order number.

The trouble is, of course, that this implies that all bitstreams are at
the same level of subdivision of the item, so it fails to manage items
where, say, illustrations are linked files, whose parent is a chapter.
This suggests that each bitstream is mapped to a parent, which is the
item if the bitstream is a top level subdivision or the bitstream(s?) if
it is a subivision or subsidiary part of a bitstream. For example,
chapter 1 of item 1 has item 1 as its parent, order place 1 (assume no
introduction!) and illustration 1 has chapter 1 as its parent, also
order place 1 while illustration 2 also has chapter 1 as its parent but
order place 2. This would map quite well to a METS structMap, where an
item can be subdivided to arbitrary depth. One further difficulty is
that the same item might have several places in the ordering. A web page
linked to from several other parts of the site springs to mind, but an
illustration might possibly appear (and so be linked with) several
chapters. Of course web sites are a different proposition in that there
need be no sequential ordering at all, they are navigated by following
links in any available order. Maybe an order place of zero could be used
to indicate such cases?

For what its worth our more detailed METS assumes a single layer of
subdivision of an item (e.g. into chapters or pages) and doesn't do
anything so rash as specify the order of the divs in the structMap. We'd
like to take this further but as the database doesn't support it we
can't.

Hope this verbosity is of interest,
Jon

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[Jonathan Bell [jpb]]

Hi,

I know and agree - it's just that we (in Aberystwyth) are trying to generate the METS automatically from DSpace so have as our starting point the metadata that is submitted into the standard DSpace submission interface. At least part of the problem is capturing and storing the required metadata to allow the structMap to be built, nicht wahr? This was what my earlier email attempted to outline.

 

Cheers,

Jon

---

From: Robert Wolfe [mailto:rwo...@MIT.EDU]
Sent: 13 December 2005 14:17
To: Jonathan Bell [jpb]
Cc: Tansley, Robert; Ann Devenish; dspac...@lists.sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Dspace-tech] Display order of multiple files

Hi,

I just want to point out the if you prepare a proper structMap section for your METS packages than your problem should be easily solved.  The div element has an @ORDER that takes an integer and provides just the sort of information to which you want to point your METS processor.  It will even work for hierarchies of content.

See: http://www.loc.gov/standards/mets/docs/mets.v1-5.html#div

Robert Wolfe

Metadata Specialist

MIT Libraries/OpenCourseWare

rwo...@mit.edu

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[Guertin, Dennis]

Interesting points all...I've been wondering how the search
function actually works because one thing we're lacking and
wanting concerns navigation from one item of a search to
the next WITHOUT having to return to the "Browse by..."
list display...

Can the handle for the subsequent (next in results list) item
be passed on to simple or full record displays?



Dennis Guertin
CANDIS System Admin
Defence R&D Canada
613-992-1091
Dennis....@drdc-rddc.gc.ca