Non-Text Theses as an Integrated Part of the University Repository: a Case Study of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague

From the abstract: Training the professional artists of the future brings several challenges. Students at the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague (AMU), at all degree levels, are required to produce outputs including several final qualifying works. A piece of written work is mandatory, but this is usually accompanied by records of artistic performance — a graduation film, a stage role, graphic materials, a concert, a set of photographs, etc....The preservation and discovery of and access to these works are issues of obvious importance, just as is the case with ‘traditional’ textual works. These issues were addressed at AMU by modifications to an Open Source system, DSpace. Metadata based on the Dublin Core Standard was extended to include the relation element qualifiers. The modules for editing and displaying were modified to permit searching and viewing of the related documents. Video and audio players were integrated into the system to make the related multimedia files available directly from the primary record page. A handle server, which generates persistent identifiers, was implemented....