Celsius Network

The cooperative and collaborative work between Universities and Libraries are key points for teachers, researchers and students to make progress in their studies and research. The Library Linkage Initiative has pursued this purpose since its creation, and it has been very useful for many Institutions, Universities and Libraries in America and Spain, specially for those with scant resources. In PrEBi UNLP it has been created the Celsius software, which has become the standard application for management of users requests in the Initiative. The result of many years of use, improvement and experience acquisition has result in Celsius Network which has made a breakthrough in the Celsius development history. This last version intends to connect all instances of Celsius in a network, meeting the needs of users and operators that belong to the participants Institutions members of ISTEC. In the following article we have included a brief description of what ISTEC, LL Initiative and Celsius are -in order to present global view where Celsius Software fits- and a detailed description of users needs, new features and advantages in Celsius Network as well.Proyecto de Enlace de Bibliotecas (PrEBi

Interconnection and sharing through webservices

Webservices technology is one of the stilts on which the concept WEB 2.0 is sustained. This technology allows to send information between computers connected to the network, providing a high portability level communication mechanism that permits this interconnection to be made between different hardware platforms and internal data representation, many operative systems, applications developed in several languages or databases and mainly, a very simple language, standardized and efficient for information transport such as XML.Proyecto de Enlace de Bibliotecas (PrEBi

Celsius Network

The cooperative and collaborative work between Universities and Libraries are key points for teachers, researchers and students to make progress in their studies and research. The Library Linkage Initiative has pursued this purpose since its creation, and it has been very useful for many Institutions, Universities and Libraries in America and Spain, specially for those with scant resources. In PrEBi UNLP it has been created the Celsius software, which has become the standard application for management of users requests in the Initiative. The result of many years of use, improvement and experience acquisition has result in Celsius Network which has made a breakthrough in the Celsius development history. This last version intends to connect all instances of Celsius in a network, meeting the needs of users and operators that belong to the participants Institutions members of ISTEC. In the following article we have included a brief description of what ISTEC, LL Initiative and Celsius are -in order to present global view where Celsius Software fits- and a detailed description of users needs, new features and advantages in Celsius Network as well.Proyecto de Enlace de Bibliotecas (PrEBi

Interconnection and sharing through webservices

Webservices technology is one of the stilts on which the concept WEB 2.0 is sustained. This technology allows to send information between computers connected to the network, providing a high portability level communication mechanism that permits this interconnection to be made between different hardware platforms and internal data representation, many operative systems, applications developed in several languages or databases and mainly, a very simple language, standardized and efficient for information transport such as XML

Extract, transform and load architecture for metadata collection

Digital repositories acting as resource aggregators typically face different challenges, roughly classified in three main categories: extraction, improvement and storage. The first category comprises issues related to dealing with different resource collection protocols: OAI-PMH, web-crawling, webservices, etc and their representation: XML, HTML, database tuples, unstructured documents, etc. The second category comprises information improvements based on controlled vocabularies, specific date formats, correction of malformed data, etc. Finally, the third category deals with the destination of downloaded resources: unification into a common database, sorting by certain criteria, etc. This paper proposes an ETL architecture for designing a software application that provides a comprehensive solution to challenges posed by a digital repository as resource aggregator. Design and implementation aspects considered during the development of this tool are described, focusing especially on architecture highlights

Repositorios DSpace con múltiples contextos OAI-PMH

DSpace es una de las herramientas de software más utilizadas en la actualidad (OpenDOAR, 2014), y parte de esto se debe a la facilidad de montaje y puesta en funcionamiento. Este software presenta un acoplamiento de varias tecnologías ‒tales como Cocoon, Spring, SOLR, XOAI, XSLT, etc.‒, por lo que, su aprendizaje, varias veces tiene una curva de desarrollo muy lenta. A pesar de ésto, su montaje no exige una profunda especialización sobre todos estos aspectos, sino que puede realizarse con un conocimiento relativamente mínimo. DSpace permite una instalación por defecto, en la que se configuran los parámetros mínimos necesarios para su funcionamiento. Sin embargo, algunas veces la instalación por defecto no es suficiente, y es preciso realizar ajustes para cumplir con especificaciones provenientes del entorno: los usuarios del repositorio, la propia institución o incluso instituciones externas. La personalización de la instalación básica de DSpace requiere, generalmente, conocimiento profundo de las distintas herramientas que lo componen, por lo que llega a ser un problema en algunas instituciones con bajos recursos y carentes de personal técnico experimentado en este software. Un caso concreto de este problema es la modificación del Data Provider OAI-PMH que viene integrado a DSpace, que en ciertos casos debe sufrir ajustes debido a requerimientos institucionales, directrices o estándares. Por ejemplo, en Argentina, existe un organismo (el Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación Productiva) que define ‒entre otras cosas‒ una serie de directrices para conformar una red interoperable de repositorios institucionales (RI) nacionales. Estas directrices son aplicables sobre los metadatos expuestos mediante un Data Provider OAI-PMH; en caso de DSpace, el Data Provider utilizado es XOAI. A partir del problema citado en el párrafo precedente, la necesidad de muchos repositorios de cumplir con estos requerimientos, y la búsqueda de ampliar el alcance de la producción académica científica más allá de las fronteras nacionales, surge este trabajo que comparte las experiencias del equipo de “Servicio de Difusión de la Creación Intelectual, Universidad Nacional de La Plata” (SEDICI ), relativas a la configuración del Data Provider de DSpace para distintas directrices o contextos. Se describen aquí los principales elementos del módulo XOAI, las cuestiones claves a tener en cuenta para configurarlo, cómo habilitarlo para su funcionamiento en diferentes contextos de cosecha (por ejemplo, contextos específicos de DRIVER y de OPENAire), y algunos problemas técnicos que surgieron al momento de llevar a cabo la personalización. Si bien existen varias guías de desarrollo sobre DSpace y su Data Provider, en este informe se brinda una explicación funcional detallada y lo más abarcativa posible ‒en los aspectos que lo requieran‒, así como un ejemplo de configuración para la exportación de metadatos mediante XOAI siguiendo directrices específicas. Con este informe se busca facilitar la tarea de configuración a quienes están implementando un repositorio y desean adecuarse a los requisitos planteados desde iniciativas nacionales e internacionales de interoperabilidad

Open modeling and simulation framework for evolutive analysis

Simulation is the process of executing a model, that is a representation of a system with enough detail to describe it but not too excessive. This model has a set of entities, an internal state, a set of input variables that can be controlled and others that cannot, a list of processes that bind these input variables with the entities and one or more output values, which result from the execution of events.\nRunning a model is totally useless if it can not be analyzed, which means to study all interactions among input variables, model entities and their weight in the values of the output variables. In this work we consider Discrete Event Simulation, which means that the status of the system variables being simulated change in a countable set of instants, finite or countable infinite.\nExisting GPSS implementations and IDE's provide a wide range of tools for analysis of the results, for generation and execution of experiments and to perform complex analysis (such as Analysis of Variance, screening and so on). This is usually enough for most common analysis, but more detailed information and much more specific analysis are often required.\nIn addition, teaching this kind of simulation languages is always a challenge, since the way it executes the models and the abstraction level that their entities achieve is totally different compared to general purpose programming languages, well known by most students of the area. And this is usually hard for students to understand how everything works underground.\nWe have developed an open source simulation framework that implements a subset of entities of GPSS language, which can be used for students to improve the understanding of these entities. This tool has also the ability to store all entities of simulations in every single simulation time, which is very useful for debugging simulations, but also for having a detailed history of all entities (permanents and temporary) in the simulations, knowing exactly how they have behaved in every simulation time.\nIn this paper we provide an overview of this development, making special stress on the simulation model design and on the persistence of simulation entities, which are the basis that students and researchers of the area need in order to extend the model, adapt it to their needs or add all analysis tools to the framework

Open modeling and simulation framework for evolutive analysis

Simulation is the process of executing a model, that is a representation of a system with enough detail to describe it but not too excessive. This model has a set of entities, an internal state, a set of input variables that can be controlled and others that cannot, a list of processes that bind these input variables with the entities and one or more output values, which result from the execution of events. Running a model is totally useless if it can not be analyzed, which means to study all interactions among input variables, model entities and their weight in the values of the output variables. In this work we consider Discrete Event Simulation, which means that the status of the system variables being simulated change in a countable set of instants, finite or countable infinite. Existing GPSS implementations and IDE's provide a wide range of tools for analysis of the results, for generation and execution of experiments and to perform complex analysis (such as Analysis of Variance, screening and so on). This is usually enough for most common analysis, but more detailed information and much more specific analysis are often required. In addition, teaching this kind of simulation languages is always a challenge, since the way it executes the models and the abstraction level that their entities achieve is totally different compared to general purpose programming languages, well known by most students of the area. And this is usually hard for students to understand how everything works underground. We have developed an open source simulation framework that implements a subset of entities of GPSS language, which can be used for students to improve the understanding of these entities. This tool has also the ability to store all entities of simulations in every single simulation time, which is very useful for debugging simulations, but also for having a detailed history of all entities (permanents and temporary) in the simulations, knowing exactly how they have behaved in every simulation time. In this paper we provide an overview of this development, making special stress on the simulation model design and on the persistence of simulation entities, which are the basis that students and researchers of the area need in order to extend the model, adapt it to their needs or add all analysis tools to the framework.Proyecto de Enlace de Bibliotecas (PREBI

Experiencia en el harvesting de documentos OAI en el proyecto SeDiCI

En este artículo se presentan las estrategias y particularidades encontradas en el proceso de harvesting de información académica realizado sobre diecisiete (17) repositorios de información. Esta iniciativa, llevada a cabo en la Universidad Nacional de La Plata, tiene como objetivo el brindar material de valor académico complementario al de propia producción institucional ya residente en la Biblioteca Digital del Portal SeDiCI. En el trabajo se tratan temáticas tales como: dificultades que el protocolo debería considerar para las posibilidades tecnológicas y de conectividad de nuestros países, dificultades en lo referente a la uniformidad de la información que se encuentra en los diferentes repositorios, tanto como los hallazgos y el potencial aprovechamiento máximo que el protocolo puede brindar para el descubrimiento de nuevas fuentes de información

SeDiCI (Intellectual Creation Diffusion Service)

The Intellectual Creation Diffusion Service (SeDiCi) of the UNLP was created with the main objective of communicating to the society all the knowledge acquired in different academic fields of our university. This is how we can return all the efforts that were destined to our public institution.Servicio de Difusión de la Creación Intelectual (SeDiCI