Getting started with EPrints - not the easiest install, but good CLI practice

This week has been spent installing and configuring EPrints. I found the EPrints installation to be slightly trickier than DSpace or Drupal. There were some things I had to wrap my head around in terms of setting up EPrints with the LAMP and SSH. One thing that tripped me up was that I had already set up the mySQL server with a username and password and needed to relay that through EPrints. Once I figured out what was happening there, things got easier. It does remind me that I need to be very careful about keeping track of passwords and I've been generally going along with what the installation instructions from Bruce recommend. It just makes it easier. The other thing about having problems is that I "get" to repeat the procedures multiple times, which actually helps me learn them a lot better. I genuinely try to make sure that when I'm typing in commands, I understand what I'm doing. My CLI skills are getting better, but I sure do get tired of typing in long strings of folders to get back and forth in Linux. I'm assuming that if I got better, I would find workarounds for this such as creating symbolic links for frequently used directories.

I customized or "branded" the EPrints front page with the name of my collection and a logo. This all had to be done using the CLI interface and moving things between my user home folder in Linux and then using CLI to copy it over to EPrints. I found this a little time-consuming and wished that there were more administrative features in EPrints that would allow better customization of it. The same goes for changing the taxonomy in EPrints. One has to go into the CLI interface and move things back and forth (or work in nano) in order to customize the taxonomy, which defaults to LCSH. I guess they assume that most people won't need a custom taxonomy, but I wonder about that. As more and more types and varieties of collections get digitized, it seems likely that custom taxonomies, folksonomies and tagging will be expected from users.

At any rate, I am looking forward to adding my collection to EPrints and seeing it in action. I've been impressed with some of the photo and video collections that I've seen in EPrints, which is a bit unexpected, but a pleasant surprise to be sure.