Enabling RSS Feeds in Manakin
November
Another feature we wanted to make available within the repository is RSS feeds. You are not currently able to expose these feeds in version 1.5 of Dspace which we are running unless you are able to develop what is known as an aspect to do this. If you are interested in developing an aspect have a look here.

I was fortunate enough to get in touch with a very helpful man called Conal Tuohy who working with Ingrid Mason (both working at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand at the time) had developed an aspect to expose RSS feeds. I was then able to add this to our Dspace installation and success…we have RSS feeds.

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Getting to grips with the XMLUI in Dspace
September
We have decided to take advantage of the new XML based user interface (XMLUI) in DSpace 1.5. This is powered by a bit of software called Manakin. The downside to working with this is that documentation is quite sparse. However following a few days of trying various ideas and designs I put together a page design for UPlaCe.

There are quite a few advantages to using the XMLUI as it is more heavily css based as opposed to the less and more table based JSP interface. You are also able to apply different themes to different areas of the repository website. If you want to learn more about creating XMLUI themes for dspace have a look here.

Here you can see the latest interface:

UPlace

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UPlaCe Poster
June
We have been making lots of progress with the repository development of the last couple of weeks with meetings being held soon to identify the needs of the users and to allow us to optimise the metadata for each type of document. I have also created an A0 poster which you can see below.

UPlaCe Poster

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UPlaCe flyer
March
The first (of hopefully many) UPlaCe flyers is now available for downloading. The ‘What is it all about?’ flyer gives an introduction to the UPlaCe project

UPLaCe flyer

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UPC Repository now UPlaCe
February
Originally this project was the UPC Repository. Not the most inspiring of project names but it does what is says on the tin – a Repository for the UPC Faculty of the University of Plymouth. The sister project to this one is UsPaCe – a Web2.0 project looking at support for placement/Work Based Learning students and we made the decision to rename the UPC Repository to UPlaCe (you place things into a repository…….).

So UPlaCe it is, expect to see a newly branded website soon. We’ve already moved everything over to this domain – www.uplace.org.uk.

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Dissemination at Ascilite
December
In the first few weeks of the project started we started disseminating.

We presented a paper on Communities of Practice at the Ascilite Conference in Singapore and also submitted a poster on the Repository project, even though we were very much in the concept stage.

Poster for Ascilite

When we get the repository up and running the first contributions will be the Poster and accompanying paper.

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UPC Repository Facebook group
September
Since the announcement went out in the University of Plymouth’s Vice Chancellor’s newsletter that we’ve been funded for both the UsPaCe and the UPC Repository projects we’ve had quite a few people requesting information on both projects.

Rather than setting up yet another email newsletter or email distribtuion list we’ve set up two Facebook groups – one of UsPaCe and one for the UPC Repository. If you are a member of Facebook you can apply to join the UPC Repository Facebook group.

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UsPaCe and the UPC Repository
September
So we’ve had two projects funded by JISC- UsPaCe and the UPC Repository. There is synergy between the projects which is the reason why the websites look the same, but I’ve decided that each project should have it’s own blog.

There will be times when some blog posts will be shared across the two blogs, the UsPaCe + Repository Category in both blogs.

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UPC Repository site launched
September
As you can see the site is finally launched. More content will be added soon

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The UPC Repository Blog