Intrallect at the cutting edge of SWORD | 27/08/2007

Many customers have asked Intrallect to provide a simple interface for automatically depositing materials into their intraLibrary repositories. Rather than create a proprietary solution, Intrallect decided to collaborate with others to create an open specification that could be supported by a range of repository systems, authoring tools and packaging tools. This collaboration led to the JISC SWORD project, managed by UKOLN. "SWORD" stands for "Simple Web Service Ordering Repository Deposit".

There were clear benefits in using an existing specification, with a large community of implementors, as the foundation for SWORD. The original goal of the IETF’s Atom Publishing Protocol (APP), was to standardise how content is published to blogs, but it is also being used in other areas, such as the Google Data API. The SWORD specification is a profile of the APP that meets the most urgent needs of the repository community for a deposit interface. Software teams for Intrallect, ePrints, DSpace and Fedora are all busy implementing the SWORD profile of the APP, and a reference client will be provided as open source software.