@mire recognized by DuraSpace as Registered Service Provider

Ithaca, NY, Today, the DuraSpace not-for-profit organization announced its new Registered Service Provider Program to establish partnerships with companies that provide support services to institutions using the DSpace and Fedora digital repository software.

The new program will establish an network of service providers offering a range of services including customer support, technical consulting, software development, and systems integration. The program will benefit universities, libraries, museums, research institutions, and others that require support in building or maintaining repository-based systems built with DSpace, Fedora, and related open source and commercial technologies.

Registered Service Providers will be easily identified. They will be featured on the DuraSpace web site (duraspace.org) and relevant project websites, with contact information and a profile of their service offerings. Providers will also exhibit their affiliation with DuraSpace by displaying the special DuraSpace Service Provider Logo on their marketing materials and websites.

Registered Service Providers share the DuraSpace commitment to ensuring that current and future generations have access to our collective digital heritage. Service Providers are active participants in open source software communities and are committed to providing expertise and technical consulting to enable customers to achieve their goals with open technologies.

The program launches with five initial Registered Service Providers: @mire, CILEA, Discovery Garden, Ennovation, and Media Shelf. DuraSpace invites other companies providing services supporting digital repositories and cloud-based solutions to join.

Lieven Droogmans, CEO of @mire says, "@mire is proud to be one of the first Registered Service Providers in the DuraSpace program. Through this financial and technical commitment, our company seeks to further extend its relationship with the community and to contribute to the continuity and success of DSpace around the world. DSpace is the key component in most of @mire's projects and lies at the core of @mire's activities. Each member of our technical staff is fully devoted to DSpace customization and development."

ABOUT DURASPACE

DuraSpace is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization. DuraSpace software and services are used worldwide as solutions for open access, institutional repositories, digital libraries, digital archives, data curation, virtual research environments, and more. DuraSpace provides leadership and innovation in the use of open source and cloud-based technologies to serve libraries, universities, research centers, cultural heritage institutions, and other knowledge stewards. The organizationÕs open source technology portfolio includes the DSpace open access repository application, the Fedora open repository platform, and the Mulgara semantic database. DuraSpace is the home of DuraCloud, an emerging cloud-based service that leverages existing cloud infrastructure to enable durability and access to digital content. The DuraSpace team includes recognized leaders and experts in the management of digital information. The team works with an active and diverse international community committed to the durability of digital resources.

The DuraSpace technology portfolio inherently addresses the issue of durability of digital content. Our values are expressed in our organizational byline, Òopen technologies for durable digital content

@mire attended JASIG Spring 2010 Conference

The focus was on innovation this year, celebrating JASIG's 10th anniversary. New and established work from higher education institutions was highlighted: Projects you should know about; local projects in search of community; creative work by established communities of practice; projects that exist only as a gleam in the eye of a creative developer.

Talks were presented in one of four tracks:

• Designing & Developing
  For developers, architects, UX designers, testers. Presentations for people who build applications.
• Deploying & Integrating
  For people who need to make applications work on campus: developers, content providers, team leaders, evangelists. In particular, we would like to highlight work that integrates open source projects within the enterprise infrastructure and with each other.
• Managing & Governing
  What are best practices for managing community source projects or their deployments on campus? For encouraging adoption? For gaining acceptance and campus buy-in? For engaging your community in the processes? Presentations for managers, team leaders, executives, planners and strategists.
• Looking Ahead
  What are the technologies that will impact higher education in the coming years? What project work, prototypes, plans, and local campus applications would you like to share with a community of your peers?

@mire attended Code4Lib

Code4Lib 2010 is a conference for library technologists to commune, gather/create/share ideas and software, be inspired, and forge collaborations. It is also an outgrowth of the Access HackFest, wrapped into a conference-like format. It is *the* event for technologists building digital libraries and digital information systems, tools, and software.

See the conference homepage for more information

@mire attended Subject Repositories Conference

This conference looked at the progress made with subject repositories so far. It also saw the launch of Economists Online, the key output of an EC-funded subject repository project managed by the Nereus consortium of top European economics libraries. Nereus members showcased this subject repository in both plenary and parallel sessions, sharing lessons learned and engaging delegates in discussions of the main issues such as content recruitment, search and retrieval services, usage statistics and datasets.

Among the speakers were Chuck Henry, President of the Council on Library and Information Resources in the US, Clifford Lynch, Director of the Coalition for Networked Information, Cathrine Harboe-Ree, University Librarian at Monash University who led the Arrow project and is involved in leading the ANDS project, and Christian Zimmermann, Economics professor at the University of Connecticut. Professor Nick Barr of the London School of Economics launched the Economists Online portal.

More information can be found on the conference website

@mire presented at Online Information Conference 2009 (London, UK)

@mire presents at the Online Information Conference 2009

"The Institutional Repository in 2010 and beyond"

2nd of December, 11:30, London

As you all know, 2009 has proved to be another momentus year in the information industry - a year in which every part of our industry has hit the headlines in the mainstream press. Google, Bing, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, some of the new information super-brands, are now household names and part of the fabric of society. Has there ever been a better time to be an information professional?

Yes the recession has hit hard across many sectors. And of course belts have been tightened. But nothing seems to stem the tide of innovation in our industry. If anything, the economic climate has fuelled even greater innovation and allowed companies to be even more radical in the way they use the information tools and platforms now available.

This year's Online Information Conference will show case all these innovations and will signpost the emerging trends for 2010. From an @mire perspective, the themes on Libraries are particularly interesting:

• Next generation libraries
• Digital libraries
• The use of Open Linked Data services in libraries
• Innovation in libraries
• Academic library 2.0 initiatives
• eLearning projects
• Building and managing institutional repositories
• Managing electronic resources in academic and corporate libraries
• ROI on technology investment
• Managing digital projects
• Working with suppliers and negotiating the best deals (from a librarian's point of view)
• Death of the monolithic LMS
• LMS as a service
• Links between library management systems and virtual learning environments

@mire attended Digital Library Federation: Fall Forum (CA, USA)

DLF Forums convene twice a year and includes digital library practitioners from member institutions. It serves as a meeting place, a market place, and a congress. As a meeting place it provides an opportunity for DLF initiatives to conduct their business and to present their work to the broader membership. As a market place, it provides an opportunity for practitioners to share experiences and practices with one another and to support a broad level of information-sharing between professional staff. As a congress, it provides an opportunity for the DLF to review and assess its programs and its progress with input from the broader membership community.

@mire sponsored the DSpace User Group Meeting, Göteborg, Sweden

Following up the highly successful DSpace User Groups in Rome (2007), Bergen (2006) and Cambridge (2005), the university of Göteborg hosted the latest European DSpace User Group Meeting.

As a proud sponsor of this event, @mire's Mark Diggory, Lieven Droogmans, Ben Bosman and Bram Luyten attend the event. Representing one of the most successful open source platforms within academia with more than 700 installations worldwide, the aim was to share experiences from users, administrators and developers and to discuss the further possibilities for DSpace.

@mire provided advanced Manakin training at the South African DSpace Technical Workshop, Stellenbosch, South Africa

The Universities of Stellenbosch and Pretoria have the pleasure to announce the upcoming DSpace Technical Workshop to be hosted at Stellenbosch University from 7 - 11 September 2009.

This workshop has been designed to address the need for more in-depth DSpace technical training amongst HE academic library services in South Africa (see the workshop program schedule online). It will cover the fundamentals of hosting an Institutional Repository (IR) system, installing the Linux operating system for hosting the IR, installing the latest DSpace repository management software on the operating system, and configuring the Manakin XSLT-based presentation layer of DSpace to allow for greater flexibility in adapting the user interface to the needs of the institution. Staff from both the Universities of Stellenbosch and Pretoria will act as facilitators for this workshop, alongside DSpace expert and co-founder Lieven Droogmans from @mire.

All parties will bring their respective expertise and knowledge to this workshop in an effort to grow the capacity of South African academic IT specialists and librarians for hosting an IR within their institutions.

@mire presented DSpace at Informatie aan Zee, Oostende, Belgium

The "Vlaamse Vereniging voor Bibliotheek-, Archief- en Documentatiewezen" invited all Belgian stakeholders in the library and information management landscape to its Informatie aan Zee conference.

Bram Luyten presented an introduction to the latest DSpace developments during his "DSpace Update" presentation on Thursday 10th september, 1pm, Zaal Permeke, Kursaal Oostende.

Meet @mire this fall in Belgium, South Africa, Sweden and UK

Once universities around the globe start kicking off their new academic years, you'll have the opportunity to meet @mire at high profile events in Belgium, South Africa, Sweden and the United Kingdom.

For more information on these events, read all about them on the Events page.

@mire sponsors the CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication (OAI6)

@mire is proud to sponsor the next CERN Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication. With over 200 attendees from 36 countries, this conference is one of the most important Open Access and Repository related conferences in Europe this year.

More information is available on the Conference Website. Make sure to visit the @mire booth, and the DSpace presentation on wednesday morning.

@mire adds new references

Last month, @mire started the execution of several new projects. At the University of Utrecht, @mire facilitates the upgrade process to DSpace 1.5.2, while carefully conserving all existing customizations that the institute has made to the original DSpace code.

@mire is assisting the European University Institute and the University College Dublin in reaching full compliance with OAI interface guidelines for the Network of European Economists Online (NEEO).

Watch Open Repositories Presentations Live

The presentations of the DSpace User Group during Open Repositories 2009 will be webcast live from Atlanta, Georgia. These presentations include two @mire talks:

• DSpace 2.0 Demonstration
  Wednesday May 20th, 11:30am, GLC Room 236
• DSpace 2.0 and 1.5.2 XMLUI Enhancements to Modularity
  Wednesday May 20th, 1:30pm, GLC Room 236

Click here for the Webcast
Wednesday 20th of May, 11:30am and 1:30pm EST

@mire presentations at Open Repositories 2009

As a bronze sponsor, @mire is supporting the upcoming 4th annual international Open Repositories Conference, that will be held May 18th - 21st, 2009 at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Through the format of blending open user group meetings for DSpace, Fedora, and Eprints, followed by general conference sessions that cover cross-cutting and overarching issues, Open Repositories creates an opportunity to explore the challenges faced by Digital Repository Managers in today’s world.

We kindly invite you to visit our booth in the exhibition space of the conference, and attend one of @mire’s presentations and workshops:

• Reusing open-access content using authoring tools
  Tuesday May 19th, 10am, Grand Ballroom Salon III
• DSpace 2.0 Demonstration
  Wednesday May 20th, 11:30am, GLC Room 236
• DSpace 2.0 and 1.5.2 XMLUI Enhancements to Modularity
  Wednesday May 20th, 1:30pm, GLC Room 236
• Maximizing Repository Exposure (poster)
  Wednesday May 20th, 5:15pm, GLC

At Open Repositories 2009, you have the unique opportunity to interact with developers, the DSpace Foundation, and other stakeholders to ensure that DSpace 2.0 will meet your future needs.

24th - DSpace add-on modules demo hosted by Solinet (Lyrasis)

DSpace add-on modules and services are designed to address institution- or user- specific needs when using DSpace and other institutional repository tools. In this demo, @mire will show you the functionality and benefits of the Metadata Quality Module, the Reporting Suite, the Audiovisual Streaming Module, Document Streaming Module and Image Zoom Module.

More information is available on the Solinet Website

17th - Tog@ther demo hosted by Solinet (Lyrasis)

Tog@ther offers a complete solution for managing conferences or events. Often conveners need a number of tools including custom made websites, special arrangements in order to accept credit payments and reviewing systems. Tog@ther brings it all together, giving conveners a complete environment to handle all interaction wih attendees, reviewers and interested visitors.

More information is available on the Solinet Website

@mire Labs - Free online evaluation of DSpace Add-on Modules

In its mission to push forward (r)evolutions in institutional repository web technology, @mire is proud to present @MIRE LABS. In this demonstration repository @mire showcases all of its latest modules and developments. The purpose of @mire labs is to offer repository managers and/or admins hands-on experience with the @mire's modules for DSpace. Learn more about the Benefits of @mire's add-on modules.

Included in @mire Labs, are the final BETA versions of two existing modules. The Reporting Suite's existing module for repository content analysis has been extended to cope with a broad range of web usage statistics requirements. From item-, community- or collection-pageviews, to bistream download statistics, the new "Content and Usage analysis" module goes beyond the current state of art in repository statistics.

The Metadata Quality Module v1.1 BETA provides an improved approach towards duplicate resolving, aimed at making duplicate resolving consume even less time.

Both of these modules should exit beta stage at the end of april, and installations in May can already be reserved today. All of the end-user functionality can be viewed by anyone. However, the administrator areas of the modules, require you to login. Please contact us to receive a free account on @mire Labs.

@MIRE, a leading service provider for the number one open source Institutional Repository platform, DSpace, has developed several add-on modules and on-demand customizations, greatly enhancing the functionality of DSpace.

1-3rd 4th Workshop on Institutional Repositories 2009, Pretoria, South Africa

Following the need for training and support on implementing institutional repositories in developing (and also in some instances developed) countries, a 4th Institutional Repository Workshop will be hosted by the University of Pretoria (South Africa) during 2009.

The aim of this workshop will be to equip colleagues from all sectors with the necessary skills to implement a digital repository - from compiling and implementing an e-strategy, conducting a needs analysis, compiling a business plan, proposal, installing the necessary software (we will be using DSpace open source software), digitization and copyright issues, up to giving exposure to the repository and the role of librarians and faculty.

More information is available on the Workshop Website

Two upcoming @mire demonstrations hosted by Solinet

The Southeastern Library Network (SOLINET), a not-for-profit membership organization serving library, information organizations, and cultural organizations in the Southeast, is hosting two online @mire demonstrations in April.

You can find out more about the Tog@ther demo the 17th of april, and the DSpace add-on Demo on the 24th of april, on the Upcoming Events page.

Recently, Solinet and Palinet have announced that they will merge to form "Lyrasis". This merger was approved and will be in effect from the 1st of april.

@mire is Twittering

You can now follow @mire's updates on the Twitter platform. Over the past year, Twitter has become widely adopted in the repository, e-learing and digital library community as a way to keep people informed about evolutions and events.

For specific event reporting, hash-tags are used to group all related twitter updates (or tweets) together.

For example:
RSP Repository Softwares Day
Workshop on International Repository Infrastructure

RSP Repository Software Day 2009, Manchester, UK

@mire presented its DSpace add-on modules during the DSpace User Group meeting. Although limited in time and scheduled at the end of the day, it was very interesting to meet 15 UK DSpace users, and learn more about their current challenges and comments. With Graham Triggs, Chris Yates and Elin Stangeland present, there was a strong DSpace presence.

The aim of the day is through exhibition and demonstration, to introduce Repository Managers and Technical Support Officers to a range of existing and developing Repository software and technology; and to allow the chance for discussion and solution discovery between delegates and software providers through exhibition, case studies, surgeries and user groups.

Click here for the Event Homepage.

International Repositories Workshop, Amsterdam, NL

This 2 day workshop brought together a large field of international repository authorities, from which the European ones were best represented. Some names include JISC (UK), SURF (Netherlands), DRIVER (European), SPARC (international) & SPARC Japan.

@mire took part in the discussions on the theme of an international organization. These were very open and broad discussions that resulted in a clear identification of stakeholders and which benefits would be desirable for them. At this point, the people from DRIVER are defining the scope and objectives of such an organization, in order to launch this initiative by October 2009.

Click here to read the Twitter updates about this event.

The focus of this two day workshop was limited to repositories of open access research papers in order to progress the most mature aspects of developing repository networks. However, it will be necessary to highlight links with other data/resource types and to reflect trends in research practice including international, collaborative, data-driven science.

The objectives of the workshop were:

1. to review and accept the description of the current position as described in the briefing materials
2. to come to a shared vision of an international repositories infrastructure or, at least, the infrastructure components that might best be developed internationally
3. to identify the essential components of an international repositories infrastructure
4. to review the approaches to sustainability, scalability and interoperability being taken by these components, bearing in mind the wider research infrastructure
5. to agree ways to resolve any issues identified in (3) above, including areas where practical international collaboration would help
6. to identify critical success factors in achieving the progress identified in (4) above, bearing in mind the current position
7. to consider ways in which the progress might be coordinated and reviewed over time

Click here for the Event Homepage.

@mire visited CeBit 2009, Hannover, DE

Aside from the interesting new evolutions in consumer electronics, it was particulary impressive to see so many research institutions in the CeBit future parc.

Mark Diggory joins @mire

@mire NV, an international Institutional Repository Service provider headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, announces its collaboration with Mark Diggory (San Diego, California). Mark Diggory's activities will have a strong focus on DSpace oriented projects, providing a U.S. based service both for @mire's expanding U.S. client base, as well as for international clients.

Mark spent the past decade as a Software Project manager and systems engineer for M.I.T. Libraries and Harvard University. Mark is a member of the core DSpace 2.0 development team. And together with @mire's Head of Development, Ben Bosman, in collaboration with the DSpace Foundation, @mire will continue to contribute to DSpace 2.0 development.

Mark Diggory comments
"I am enthusiastic about partnering with @mire's capable development team to bring DSpace software consultancy services to the U.S. @mire's philosophy of transparency and collaboration when working with clients has a strong synergy with the DSpace communities open source initiatives. Our partnership creates the best vendor solution for organizations around the globe that need the security and experience of long-term support for their Institutional Repository services. We mediate the risks that confront in-house software customization projects by partnering with your organization throughout the process, from producing detailed requirements analysis' and quotes, to providing complete and robust customizations to DSpace."

Lieven Droogmans, @mire's CEO said
"Mark's outstanding reputation speaks for itself. This collaboration will not only enhance our portfolio of commercial services for new and existing clients, but also allow us to participate within the DSpace developers group and assure the success of DSpace as an open source project. We are strongly invested in the DSpace platform and recognize the benefits of a healthy open source community as critical to our own companies success."

@mire provided DSpace consultancy and custom development services to a number of U.S. based institutions including, the U.S. National Evolutionary Synthesis Center, the Abilene Library Consortium and the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust as well as international institutions such as the University of Pretoria and the Polytechnic university of Valencia.

@mire's team has expertise in DSpace introduction and customization projects, both in the context of research institutions and digital libraries. The team of competent DSpace developers, which combined with experienced repository project managers and analysts, provides a formidable and affordable resource to a broad range of institutions. @mire's competences in state of the art repository development are demonstrated in the @mire DSpace add-on modules, which are about to become publicly available for evaluation purposes through the @mire Labs platform.

@mire relocates

@mire relocated to more spacious offices. You can now find us at Technologielaan 9, 3001 Heverlee. Our phone numbers remain unaltered.

@mire implements full DRIVER 2.0 compliance for the Institute of Tropical Medicine.

On the 13th of November 2008, the DRIVER Repository project released its 2.0 Metadata and OAI-PMH guidelines. As the largest and most important pan-european harvesting initiative, the DRIVER repository project reaches out to repositories all over Europe in order to provide a unified portal and federated search service for all combined metadata and full-text.

As a result, repositories who are harvested by DRIVER gain important additional exposure and impact for their hosted content. The Institute of Tropical Medicine, an international authority on aids and tropical disease research, recognized the importance of the DRIVER initiative and wanted to pioneer in the implementation of the new 2.0 Metadata and OAI-PMH guidelines.

With the aid of @mire, the institution was able to reach full compliance with these guidelines in less than one month.

Universidad Politécnica de Valencia acquires @mire's Metadata Quality Module

In order to resolve issues with duplicates and perform batch edit operations, the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia acquired @mire's Metadata Quality Module, for its RiuNet repository.

Because the institution is using DSpace 1.5.1 Manakin as their repository platform, installation of the Metadata Quality Module was non-intrusive and did not require modifications to the DSpace source code.

Other institutions using the Metadata Quality Module are the K.U. Leuven (Belgium) and the Abilene Library Consortium (TX, USA).

@mire celebrates its second anniversary

Two years after the company was founded, @mire is now a well established name within the industry for academic content management software and services. By keeping a solid strategic focus on tackling research specific challenges with open source repository technology and on continuous innovation, the company now has a unique range of services and products.

In March 2008, @mire launched Tog@ther, an online hosted solution for conference and event management. Built on DSpace repository technology, Tog@ther ensures optimization in both administrative (secretary) workflows, as well as in the academic workflows of paper submission and peer reviewing. As the market responded very enthusiastic to the platform's innovative features, such as the Form Creator and easy online payment integration, @mire is dedicated to enhance this flagship product even further in 2009.

Numerous repository Add-On Modules were introduced in 2008. The vision behind these modules is the experience that different repository instances have a need for very specific and advanced functionality, depending on their scope and target audience. @mire gathered internal and external best-practices in the areas of Metadata Quality Assurance, Reporting, Digital Preservation, Online access to Audiovisual Media and Images, and continues to implement these practices in highly innovative Repository Add-on Modules.

@mire Presentation at La proyección de los repositorios, Madrid, Spain

In his presentation "Assessing and executing strategic repository opportunities", Bram Luyten aimed to provide repository administrators and enthusiasts with strategic arguments and tools to improve the context of their repository projects.

The last part of the presentation covered techniques to (re-) vitalize repository projects, where three typical situations were be tackled: the Empty Box Syndrome, Lack of Interest and Arising Complaints or Opposition.

When the next speaker, Stuart Shieber (Harvard University) introduced the progress and approach of Harvard's IR project, he confirmed the issues pointed out by Bram Luyten and that Harvard had used similar strategies to tackle them.

Videos of the different presentations will be available through the conference website.

@mire attended the SPARC Digital Repositories Meeting 2008 in Baltimore.

Lieven Droogmans attended the SPARC Digital Repositories Meeting in Baltimore Maryland and the DSpace Repository Manager Meeting following the SPARC meeting. Librarians, researchers, funders, administrators, government officials, publishers, and technologists from around the world shared their experiences and best practices in building and supporting institutional and disciplinary digital repositories. The focus was on effective engagement with scholars and scientists to expand the sharing of research outputs via open repositories. Library Journal has posted a blog article on the closing keynote by David Shulenberger, VP of academic affairs at the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC), available here

@mire produced the "Introduction to DSpace" video in collaboration with the DSpace foundation.

In dialogue with the DSpace Foundation, @mire created a video that gives a quick and impressive introduction to DSpace, it's functionality and different instances.

Click here to watch the video

@mire presents to the Croatian government @ TEMPUS workshop in Zadar.

Bram Luyten presented the approach and key learnings from K.U. Leuven's Institutional Repository project DSpace. The context of this meeting was a TEMPUS (EU) project, in which delegates from Croatian Universities and research institutions interact with institutions for EU member states, in order to lay the foundation for science and research policies in Croatia.

Although Croatia is an upcoming force within the European academic research landscape, it was very interesting to see that some impressive infrastructures were already in place. One example is the presence of national researcher identifiers, that will enable to track a researcher throughout his whole career at different institutions.

@mire participates in the Google Mentor Summit @ Google HQ.

After coaching and guiding Bram De Schouwer during his successful Google Summer of Code project, Lieven Droogmans was invited to visit the Google HQ in Mountainview, California. @mire's CEO comments:

"Meeting up with Open Source developers from all over the globe, who are all at the bleeding edge of new technologies, is just fantastic. @mire will continue to engage in mutual beneficiary relationships with Open Source projects and communities in general."

@mire launches new repository modules

With new modules for Audiovisual Streaming, Image Zoom and Document Streaming, @mire improves (multimedia) content accessibility in repositories.

By enabling in-browser playback of audio and video content, the Audiovisual Streaming Module ensures immediate access to audiovisual materials in repositories.

Whether your institution hosts collections of aerial overviews, microscopy or detailed architectural images, the Image Zoom Module handles online access to any type of large image format.

Both from a digital rights management (DRM) and accessibility perspective, benefits are gained by enabling users to view and browse through documents within the browser. The Document Streaming Module displays the contents of a document, page by page, in its orginal layout.

Learn more about these new modules and their benefits.

Ben Bosman attended the European Conference on Digital Libraries

Ben Bosman, @mire co-founder and Chief Technical Officer attended the European Conference on Digital Libraries in Aarhus, Denmark.

"It is striking that concerns for long term Digital Preservation are steadily gaining priority across Europe. For the past years, actually facing and solving Digital Preservation issues in Repositories might not have been on every institutions agenda. It's clear that it will be, in years to come".

@mire launches Metadata Quality Module

The Metadata Quality Module for DSpace is designed to solve a range of problems for Institutional Repository Managers, who manage large DSpace installations. Especially when large numbers of items have been imported automatically, or submitted by users, the Metadata Quality Module safeguards the quality of descriptive fields through mass-edit operations and duplicate resolving.

Learn more about the Metadata Quality Module.

Bram De Schouwer participates in Google Summer of Code 2008 - Improved Collection Workflow System for DSpace

Bram De Schouwer, an engineering student in Computer Science from K.U. Leuven and former @mire summer intern, has been accepted in this year's Google Summer of Code.

The Google Summer of Code is an open source sponsorship from Google in which students and open source enthusiasts are encouraged through stipends to contribute to Open Source projects. Bram De Schouwer, under the mentorship of Lieven Droogmans, CEO of @mire, will develop a New Collection Workflow System for the DSpace repository software. He was one of the 4 students to get selected, from more than 20 applicants.

Find out more about Bram's project.

Extended Service offering and References online

@mire has further elaborated its service offering. We now offer full Service Level Agreements for DSpace support and maintenance. Over the past years @mire has built up maintenance and support expertise, for different versions of DSpace. As from today, @mire is offering this expertise to its existing client base and institutional repository that are already installed and in production.

This website has been extended with detailed project descriptions and client references.

New Services and Client References.

@mire presents to Norwegian delegation, Leuven, BE.

At the end of May, a delegation from leading Norwegian academic institutions and government bodies, visited Belgium. @mire presented its contribution to the LIRIAS project from K.U. Leuven.

The presentation is available here.

@mire presents at Open Repositories 2008, Southampton, UK.

On the 2nd of April, Bram Luyten of @mire presents a paper titled "Research evaluation - techniques and requirements for using DSpace to aid in evaluating the work of researchers" at the DSpace User Group track at Open Repositories 2008, Southampton, UK.

For those who missed the presentation or who want a recap, the slides are available here.

@mire launches Tog@ther

On the 19th of March, @mire launched its brand new online hosted service, Tog@ther. Tog@ther is a conference management solution, tailored to optimizing administrative processes and online web visibility of conferences. The product was launched at the prestigious European Meetings Industry Fair, and received great comments from attendees.

Visit the Tog@ther Marketing Site to learn more about Tog@ther.

@mire in Datanews

@mire was startup of the week in a recent DataNews issue.

Full Article (2MB PDF - in Dutch).

21st of June 2007:

@mire featured in Trends

In a recent 6 page article about high tech enterpreneurship in Belgium, @mire is featured as one of five reference companies.

Full Article (35MB PDF - in Dutch).

11th of May 2007:

@mire presents work to Belgian Prince.

@mire has been invited by Unizo to present it's projects to Belgium's heir to the throne, Prince Filip.

Read the Nieuwsblad article (in Dutch).

15-16th of February 2007:

Scientific publishing in the European research area:
Access, dissemination and preservation in the digital age.

The conference on scientific publishing in the european research area, organised by the European Commission, brought together hunderds of european participants. In most debates, the audience was mainly divided in two categories: representants of the publishing industry and representants from research institutes. A recurring topic was the fact that the pricing for journal subscriptions has substantially increased during the last decade, while researchers seem to rely less on paper printed copies and more on digital research. Instead of a reader-paid model, many speakers advocated the use of author-paid models. On the other hand, publishers argued that libraries would cancel their subscriptions, if the research would be freely available.
For us, it was great to hear that many publishers and funding bodies approve self-archiving of certain versions of a publication by authors and their institutes. This would mean that repositories such as Lirias, that are today mainly populated with metadata, can grow out to real fulltext repositories.

13th of February 2007:

Driver conference on Open Access and signing of the Berlin Declaration.

@mire attended the latest Driver conference on Open access, where the signing of the Berlin Declaration took place. All belgian universities, except the university from Mons (Bergen) had sent representatives to demonstrate their support for the Berlin Declaration.
Basically this declaration stands for the belief that any research, funded direct or indirect with taxpayer money, should become available in repositories or open access journals. Aside from the signing, there were interesting presentations by Alma Swan, Rik Verhaaren and prof. E Zimanyi. Those presentations can be found here. If you believe that impact factors are a great way to assess publications, you should take a look at prof. Zimanyi's presentation.
While the attendants were in general enthousiastic about open access, time has to tell how all the different parties involved in this story will interact.

@mire is proud to announce its kick-off

DSpace 1.4 released.
Includes RSS feeds developed by @mire