Data Archive - Zenodo

Abstract

The goal of this project was for students of the Multimedia, Hypertext, and Information Access course in the Data Archive group to work with their client, Professor Seungwon Yang, to create a maintainable Zenodo repository to manage multimedia and datasets collected for scientific research at LSU. Zenodo is an open source data repository created for managing research data. The students have worked with the client and the LSU IT Department to get Zenodo and potentially DSpace (another open source research data repository) installed and running on the LSU server. This process involved configurations and dependencies detailed below in this report. The LSU server has a firewall which blocks access to pages hosted by the server to users outside of the local network. Because of these obstructions, the students determined it would be more feasible to work through the above tasks locally and leave the rest of the installation process to the LSU IT Department which has more experience with the server’s configurations and dependencies. The students wrote a script to do both a single and a batch deposit of datasets through the Zenodo API. The datasets that will be included in the future batch deposits will be provided by the client and will be relevant to scientific research taking place at LSU. The script is generic and it accepts a separate, easily updated document that contains the datasets to be uploaded to facilitate the process for non-technical users to update the repository. Finally, the students have created a guide for the future Zenodo administrators detailing how to install and manage the repository and add datasets to the script to be automatically deposited as well as a guide for the users who will be using the datasets in Zenodo for their work.