Assignment 4

Joining DSpace was very simple and I was immediately struck by how easy it was to navigate around the website. It took me a while to figure out where the metadata registry was but once found, it was easy to add a field. I chose to add a subject field because I actually understood what that field meant. After I emailed Larry requesting that he add the field, I decided on what sort of collections I should add and then picked out materials to upload. Adding a collection was very simple but my creative juices are flagging at this point in the Maymester so I was hard pressed to come up with information to add to the fields. Usually that's my favorite part of an assignment like this. Once I figured out what I was going to add, I started the process without many problems. Many of the fields didn't ring a bell for me so I just filled out the ones that were familiar.

The same was true for adding to the collections. I was unsure how all of the restrictions would actually pan out once I got started developing my collection so I chose all of them instead of trying to figure out how each one would work. I added a logo to my health collection (which didn't end up really being about health--I added a cookie recipe to the collection) and I thought it looked really nice. Again, the program is so user friendly and adding a logo was super easy. I appreciated the *lack* of choices with this program as compared to Wordpress which had so many choices that I never felt like I had my bearings. DSpace felt more like Blogger to me. All the choices were plainly written, easy to find and above all SIMPLE. My cataloging skills leave a lot to be desired so boning up on those and learning more about DC would be necessary in order to use this program sufficiently but I found the program itself to be pretty darn great. All of the advanced searching was equally easy to maneuver. I chose to search: MLIS, libraries, health and cookies (not all at the same time) and got succinct responses. Now our little community is mighty small so I don't know what the searches would look like with tons of information. Overall, I felt a lot more comfortable in this work environment than Wordpress and I feel like I learned a lot.
http://mlis.library.gatech.edu/handle/123456789/73
http://mlis.library.gatech.edu/handle/123456789/76
http://mlis.library.gatech.edu/handle/123456789/111