Repository + repo = ?

This is another not-yet-fully-formed thought. This iteration of the thought came up again through a conversation with Bret Mulligan, a classics professor I work with, who wants a way to use git with open educational resources for classics.

I keep coming back to this dream of bringing together the two different systems we are referring to when we talk about repositories. There are repositories, by which we usually mean institutional repositories, which have some really wonderful features – the benefit of great metadata being one of the most notable. If not in practice, at least in theory. They also contain an ‘of record’ version of a project. Then there are “repos”, on the other hand, by which we usually mean git repositories. They have many great qualities! They have the benefit of allowing for new commits, for branching and forking and sharing in robust and powerful ways. And, they are extremely widely used and adopted, and so learning git helps you learn many other things. What I want is a repository of repos?

That can’t be right.

What I want is a system that will allow for rich metadata, structure, etc to be created about and including git repositories.

What I want is a repo of git repo that doesn’t have such a steep learning curve for novices, and that can include controlled metadata about its pieces. That can be nested comfortably into a hierarchy of other repositories…

I want to find/make/use that.

Opendataphilly links to lots of git repositories, which is awesome. It’s almost perfect but it’s not quite what I’m thinking of.

2018

From Guerrilla Open Archives

14 minute read

On Data Refuge This is the text of an essay I contributed to a pamphlet published by Memory of the World. I am deeply grateful to Memory of the World for in...

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2016

Tips for Learning Tools for Librarians

6 minute read

Sometimes librarians ask me how they should start learning all the tools. First, I give them a long, irritating lecture about how resistant I am to the notio...

Penn Libraries Job Talk

25 minute read

What follows is a lightly edited version of the talk I gave as part of my interview for the job of Assistant Director for Digital Scholarship on December 4, ...

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2015

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2014

Repository + repo = ?

1 minute read

This is another not-yet-fully-formed thought. This iteration of the thought came up again through a conversation with Bret Mulligan, a classics professor I w...

The content / interface abstraction

3 minute read

At a recent conference, I took part in a workshop for Urban Historians entitled “Workshop: Digital Projects from the Ground Up.” The basic structure was for ...

On Becoming Public

3 minute read

Updated January 2015 This is a draft. It’s not ready. If anyone is reading this, it’s because I’ve succeeded, at least a little bit, in developing a public...

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