VSim: Platform, Repository & Archive

VSim is both a software platform for presenting 3D models for teaching and research and a repository and archive of academically rigorous 3D models at the UCLA library. Funded by the the National Endowment for the Humanities (HD-50958-10 and HK-50164-14) and UCLA’s Institute for Digital Research and Education (IDRE), I served as content coordinator and developer. As such, I have research ten 3D model projects and prepared project metadata for ingest into the VSim archive. Additionally, I have drafted user manuals for both the VSim Archive and Repository website as well as for the downloadable software. Finally, I have assisted in user testing and development of the the VSim software and the DSpace environment, which was used to create the VSim Archive and Repository.

Working on the VSim project with Dr. Lisa Snyder has been essential to my understandings of the challenges facing 3D scholarship and publishing. The considerable amount of time, research, and funds that is invested to produce such models for educational purposes is only recently being recognized for tenureship and promotion. The mechanism for academic peer review and long term preservation are still in the process of being standardized. I have joined the Community Standards for 3D Preservation (CS3DP) Working Group to participate in researching and recommending best practices for 3D scholarship in the areas of: access, metadata, preservation, management, and copyright.

TOOLS

VSim

DSpace

GitHub

WEBSITE

https://vsim.library.ucla.edu/xmlui/

ASSOCIATED OUTCOMES

CS3DP Working Group Member: https://osf.io/ewt2h/wiki/home/

DATE(S)

(June 2017 - September 2017; January 2018 - Present)