Distributed Content Tagging Tool for ePrints
The aim of this project (Dictate), undertaken by Nature Publishing Group in late 2005 and early 2006, was to integrate institutional repositories running the EPrints software with the emerging world of social bookmarking.
Executive Summary
In particular, we wanted to create software that would allow users of ePrints repositories to:
- See what tags have been assigned to the document that they are currently viewing in the repository
- Create a bookmark for the current document in their account in a social bookmarking service
- Click on links to related content, either within the same repository or elsewhere on the web, as suggested by the relevant bookmarking service
Our aim in developing this was that it should be implemented in a way that minimised the impact on the rest of the ePrints software, therefore making it easy for ePrints administrators to install and configure the tool. We chose to enable the tool to work with the social bookmarking services del.icio.us and NPG’s own Connotea. In addition, since the source code behind Connotea is open source, the tool would work with any other service running the Connotea Code. Through a process of rapid prototyping, testing and development, we were able to produce a system that met all of these aims. However, we did encounter some differences between del.icio.us and Connotea that meant that the tool functions differently, depending on whether it is using Connotea or del.icio.us as its social bookmarking service, with the full set of features only available when using Connotea.
We have now made this tool, along with suitable documentation, available for ePrints administrators to download and install in their own repositories. We anticipate that those repositories that implement the tool will benefit in the following ways:
- Content in the repository will be connected more directly with the rest of the academic literature. Repository content will share tags with similar content from all over the web, and will be listed alongside publishers’ content and literature archive entries in publicly accessible bookmark lists
- The visibility of the institutional repository will be increased. Links to the content from social bookmarking services will, among other things, increase the likelihood of that content appearing higher in search engine results
- Shared tagging will enable new forms of navigation and content discovery within the repository, complimenting the existing taxonomic classification and keyword search approaches
While there is clearly scope for further work in this area, we hope that the final outcomes of this project will enable the new approaches of social bookmarking and tagging to begin to take hold in institutional repositories, and to spread more widely within the research and teaching communities.