Re: ResourceSpaces Vs Fedora Commons for Scalability and Meta Data

[Dan Huby]

Hi Hari,

Metadata fields are completely configurable - you are free to implement whatever schema you see fit, be that Dublin Core or anything else.

Dan

On Wednesday, 7 November 2012 05:33:41 UTC, Hari Jagarnauth wrote:

We have been trying to implement fedora commons and Islandora and have finally decided to trash it.  Two of Fedora's initial selling points for our board members were it's scalability and support for Dublin Core / OAI.  How does ResourceSpace compare to Fedora in these two areas, scalability and Dublin Core / OAI capability?  Your help is greatly appreciated, thank you in advance.

[David Dwiggins]

Hi, Hari,

Wearing my Historic New England hat: We went through the same process when we first adopted ResourceSpace. Tools like Fedora are amazing in terms of metadata standard support, but seem to be developed primarily with the idea that anyone using them will have a massive and ongoing IT support operation to build and maintain the required infrastructure. I was concerned about moving in this direction for an organization our size.

We use ResourceSpace in parallel with another collections management system (ResourceSpace tracks the digital objects, and the collections system tracks physical objects. The two are linked together via some SOAP wizardry.)

With regard to scalability, I would doubt you have much to worry about. We are using the system for all of our digitized collections images and other imagery created within the organization, and now have more than 150,000 resources and over a million distinct files managed through the system. There are other installations that are even larger. For very large installations you will certainly need to ensure you've provisioned the system adequately, and may even benefit from working with a DBA to ensure that the database is performing optimally. But generally speaking we have had no real scalability concerns with the system in the 3+ years we've been live with it.

I think there is some room for growth in ResourceSpace in terms of out-of-the-box support for metadata standards. (In fact, we have an NEH grant proposal in right now that, if funded, would let us do some preliminary research and needs analysis in this area.) 

That said, however, Dan is correct. The customizable metadata model in ResourceSpace is flexible enough that you could likely implement the entry end of most standardized metadata schemas. 

Output in specific XML-based schemas would currently require some new programming, but I don't think this would be massively difficult, particularly for something as simple as unqualified Dublin Core. Similarly, there is no OAI/PMH support built into the system right now, but this could likely be added. (Particularly if the xml output schemas were done first.)

One nice thing about ResourceSpace is that the PHP/MySQL-based code and the plugin architecture make it fairly easy to develop add ons to the system, and the development community is active enough that useful additions are often also incorporated into the base code.

I'd be happy to talk to you further about this if that would be useful, and I'd also be interested in hearing more about your particular use case and what issues you ran into with Fedora/Islandora.

-David Dwiggins

ResourceSpace developer and Systems Librarian/Archivist at Historic New England

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