EPRINTS AS THE CARDINAL SCHOLAR
INSTITUTIONAL REPOSITORY AT
BALL STATE UNIVERSITY
Bringing an Open Source Institutional Repository to the
Ball State University Community
as Cardinal Scholar (CS)
Bradley Faust, Assistant Dean LITS
Ball State University Libraries
CARDINAL SCHOLAR
Vision: The Ball State University Cardinal Scholar
institutional repository (IR) system provides an
online destination for archiving, preserving and
storing intellectual property created by faculty
and others at Ball State University. Cardinal
Scholar promotes Ball State University's
intellectual work to a worldwide audience and
advances open scholarly communication.
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DISCUSSION POINTS
IR system investigation, review and
determination
 Our decision to use EPrints 3 - why?
 Implementation issues with EPrints 3
 Local customization of EPrints 3
 How is Cardinal Scholar doing today?

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IR SYSTEM INVESTIGATION – REVIEW –
DETERMINATION

Consideration of CONTENTdm as possible IR
solution
Lack of open deposit process
 Collection based organization of assets

Comparison of IR systems available at the time
 Why were other IR systems/solutions not
selected?

License fees
 Technical issues
 Functionality

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DECISION TO USE EPRINTS – WHY?

System Considerations
 EPrints
written in Perl
 Apache web server, MySQL components
 Accessible and well documented code
 Active development and user communities

Cost Considerations
 No

initial license fee – open source
Functional Considerations
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IMPLEMENTATION OF EPRINTS AS CS





Successful operation of EPrints 3 on Fedora Core
Linux platform for several months
Successful user experiences testing EPrints 3
Successful installation and operation of a EPrints 3
beta version on a Windows based test server
Successful customization of EPrints 3 system on
Windows
Successful installation and operation of a EPrints 3
development version on a Windows based production
server
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CS - FINAL LAUNCH TIMELINE


Built production Windows EPrints server - Nov 2007
Testing






Windows test system – 1st week Dec 2007
Windows production server – 2nd-3rd week Dec 2007
Soft launch – no publicity (mid Dec 2007)
Solicited user feedback and tweaked the system (mid
Dec - mid Jan)
Began publicizing CS (Jan 2008)
Needed just a few things from the Computer Center
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COMPUTER CENTER ASSISTANCE

Assign system a domain name

cardinalsholar.bsu.edu
System security scan to evaluate server
configuration
 Provide internet access to the CS server through
the campus firewall
 Acquire SSL certificate for system ($100) – to
protect logon credentials and improve overall
security
 Review informational pages for consistency with
university computing policy

IOLUG Fall Program
CUSTOMIZATION OF EPRINTS, DONE
Informational pages – heavily modified
 Deposit process pages – heavily modified
 New accounts default to ‘editor’ status
 Added left hand navigation column
 Added Depositor Status field to deposit process
 Combined ‘deposit now’ and ‘make live’ buttons
into one single function
 Added Browse by Division and by Creator feature
 Modified taskbar format and content

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VANILLA EPRINTS 3 HOMEPAGE
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CARDINAL SCHOLAR HOMEPAGE
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CUSTOMIZATION OF EPRINTS, TO DO
Reorder required fields to display together on
deposit pages
 Implement LDAP support to tie CS user accounts
to campus domain accounts
 Further develop strategy for supporting small
group access – plan to use shared user accounts
initially
 Further develop functionality around local
depositor status field
 Custom reports for OAI harvesting and other
administrative work (user tracking, usage reports)

IOLUG Fall Program
HOW IS CS DOING TODAY?
Repository has been running for 10 months
 Manually moved selected digital assets from the
test repository environment to Cardinal Scholar
 Populated production CS with:

University Archives documents
 other library and university documents

Vacant Archivist slot slowed progress this year
 Currently have over 150 digital assets in the CS
system

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OSS/FREE APPLICATIONS IN USE
Firefox browser
 KompoZer Web editor
 Zotero citation add-on  Apache web server
 Adium Chat Client
 MySQL database
(Mac)
 Perl/PHP
 VLC media player
 EPrints 3
(Mac)
 Javascript
 Audacity Audio Client
 MediaWiki
 RegexBuilder (for PHP)
 TILT

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THANK YOU

Connect to Cardinal Scholar


cardinalscholar.bsu.edu
Contact Information
765 285-8032
 bfaust@bsu.edu
 Bradley Faust

 Assistant
Dean for Library Information Technology Services
 University Libraries
 Ball State University
 Muncie, IN 47306
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