User Stories

Archiver adds a Conference Paper

Alice has been asked to archive a conference paper. It is a Word document. Since word is a proprietary format, she converts the document to PDF before uploading it into Fez. To upload it, she uses a web form to indentify the document on the hard-disk of her computer from where it is uploaded into Fez. Fez requires her to add some metadata about the paper using Dublin Core records. It also automatically creates some metadata such as the size, format, time of upload, word-count etc...

Archiver Uploads a Collection

Adam is scanning a set of slides to go into Fez. The images must all be scanned as TIFF files so that there are no jpeg compression artifacts. The resulting collection of high resolution files is quite large. Rather than try to upload the collection through the web interface, he copies them to a network drive called 'Fez incoming' (actually part of the SAN). He groups them in a directory. He then uses the Fez interface to ingest the files from that directory. Fez creates the collection and all the items in it very quickly because it doesn't need to copy the files right away. Adam then gets to work on the metadata. Fez copies the files from the incoming area to the permanent archive in the SAN in its own time, creating thumbnails and web displayable images automatically.

Researcher Uploads Data

Reg has heard that Fez is the way to go because many more people can find and use her research and she can keep track of statistics on how and where it's being used. She decides to check it out. An email she received about it has a link to Fez. She clicks on it and sees the Fez front page. She sees a clear link to a section inviting her to put her research into Fez. She logs in using her UQ username and password just like when she reads her webmail.

It is easy for her to follow the instructions to put her files into Fez and create notes about what is in the files. The system fills in a lot of the information automatically and remembers information she has typed before. She uploads some papers she's written and some tabulated data from surveys she conducted. The interface clearly shows that as she puts the research in, she is making a personal Fez area which she can get to at any time by clicking 'My Fez' from the main menu.

Researcher Checks Statistics

When Rod views his personal Fez homepage, he sees the most recent research data added in his name (an archiver may have added the material to the repository for him). He can page through and view older items as well. Next to each item he quickly sees how many downloads each has had and sees links for doing common work on the items such as updating them.

Each item has an obvious link for the referencing of research - with one click he can email an item link to a colleague or generate a citation reference he can use in a bibliography.

Rod's Fez homepage also has a Recent-Comments link where he can read comments people have left about his research. He can configure his account so that he is emailed in future when someone comments on his Fez items.

Viewer Researches a Topic

Vincent is working on a literature review about a topic. He searches for keywords in Fez and finds a result with several promising leads. He bookmarks the search and tries another. When he searches, he can add special words and symbols into the search to build boolean searches that are restricted to certain fields e.g. Dublin Core fields like title, creator, subject etc... combining them with 'AND', 'OR' and 'NOT' operators. He bookmarks several searches.

As Vincent views the research material he found in his search, he annotates the documents in Fez. His annotations are private and he can review a list of his annotations later. He also visits the Fez profiles of some of the authors to see what other research they have published. He annotates his thoughts on some of the authors. When he annotates a research paper or author, the items are bookmarked in his private Fez.

Vincent puts some tags on the items he finds to help himself and others find them later. He tags them with his topic of interest. The tags are publicly viewable and consist of one descriptive word about the research. (This concept has been used with great success on websites such as www.flickr.com)

On some of the items, he writes a public comment summarising his thoughts on the research. Others have left comments about some of the research, informally reviewing it, noting limitations or assumptions made by the author or commending it's strengths which Vincent finds useful to evaluate whether the documents and data are useful to him.

Each item has an obvious link for the referencing of research - with one click he can email an item link to a colleague or generate a citation reference he can use in a bibliography.

Researcher Restricts Permissions

Rod's research group is working on a project that is not ready for publication but which they would like to share with one another. They decide to put it in Fez so their colleagues in Antarctica can review the research material and comment on it through Fez and they all can access that discussion. They set up a collection in Fez and use a form to set permissions on the collection as a whole so that only their group can see it. They also change the permissions so that their corporate partners can view the collection but make no changes to it. Later, when they are ready to publish, they make the research available by lifting the access restrictions.

Reviewer Checks Some Research

Cheryl logs into Fez and sees that there are a number of submissions to be reviewed - these items have been uploaded by others (such as self submitting researchers) and perhaps lack completed metadata. She clicks on each one in turn and follows the workflow instructions. These include checking the metadata, making sure the files are readable, and that they conform to the correct standards.

When she is happy with a research item, she clicks a button to progress the item to the next stage of the workflow (perhaps it will be checked again or its status will change to a completed state). For one of the items, the document contains a diagram written in an unknown application. She clicks to assign the research item to the administrator who deals with the problem of convincing the author to save the item in a different format or by adding support for the format if it is an open standard.

Administrator Adds Metadata Options

The Entomology research group would like to add a collection of cricket recordings they made on Moreton Island.

Adam works with the entomology department to find the best way to digitise and store the collection with the most useful metadata. They find out about an XML format called BugML which is being used by other universities for this purpose. Adam obtains an XSD that describes the format. Adam goes to the Fez administration page and adds the XSD file to the accepted format for Fez. He then configures how the form to make a BugML file will be displayed. The web interface allows him to link the fields from the XSD file to HTML form elements such as drop down boxes and text fields. He is able to place constraints on the fields so that the entry form will check the validity when the archivers / researchers are uploading their data later. Adam doesn't have to do any programming and the system automatically sets up the form from the XSD file so he only has to tweak it here or there.