DASH! stands for ‘Data Sharing Fast’. It’s an ebrary product that empowers libraries to create, upload, and share their own PDF collections, right from their own computers.
What can I do with DASH!?
- Use DASH! for your existing special collections, theses, and dissertations – anything in PDF that you have a legal right to distribute. You cannot add copyrighted material to your DASH! collection unless you own the copyright.
- Create collections of public domain content (see our H1N1 site as an example).
- Share your collections with other institutions or publicly on the web.
What features does DASH! provide?
- Single document (at a time) upload, with metadata.
- Multiple document upload, with metadata (through the web or via FTP).
- Single document metadata edit.
- Single document delete.
How can I request DASH!?
Email support@ebrary.com with the URL of your ebrary site and the ebrary account username of person to set up as your DASH! administrator.
How many documents can a library upload at once with DASH!?
Libraries will initially be limited to 1,000 documents per day. There is an additional limit of 300MB per upload – either 1 or multiple files.
When will documents become available on ebrary?
Customers can view uploaded documents immediately and use our rich features including InfoTools. Documents should become searchable in as little as five minutes or at most within two hours.
What functionality do my DASH! documents have?
Collections created with DASH! seamlessly integrate with your ebrary subscription collections and perpetual access titles. And an uploaded DASH! document will be searchable using ebrary’s search tools if you use PDFs that retain text-searchable information. PDFs created from a Word document, for example, preserve the text information of the content.
The following are recommendations to maximize the appearance and functionality of your PDF materials in DASH!
- Compile your PDF files: If your document is split into multiple PDFs, compile each one into a single file. Include all pages and chapters, and front and back matter (table of contents, index, etc.)
- Remove security settings: Acrobat security settings must be removed for ebrary to upload and process your files.
- Embed fonts: All files should be embedded with compatible fonts.
- Trim and crop: All pages should be trimmed to final display size with no registration/crop marks or excessive white space.
- PDF type: ebrary recommends that all files be provided as PDF normal. Our technology also accepts PDF image and hidden text. Image-only PDFs are not recommended as these files do not support search and other key features of ebrary’s technology. So if you scan documents, best practice is to send them through OCR software.
- Adjust resolution: While file size does not affect page views in the ebrary system, we recommend the following image resolution ranges for processing efficiency:
- Color: 72-300 dpi
- Grayscale: 72-450 dpi
- Monotone: 72-600 dpi
- Covers: DASH! Automatically generates a cover thumbnail from the first page of the document.
- Add bookmarks and hyperlinks: If desired, include navigational aids in your PDF documents to enable users to find information more easily, such as chapter-level bookmarks and intra-document linking.
- Validation: Double-check the basic appearance and navigation features of your PDF documents before submitting them.
- Metadata: Although metadata is not required to use DASH!, we recommend providing as much information as possible to maximize Advanced Search functionality. For single-file uploads, enter metadata directly in the DASH interface. For multi-file uploads, create a .csv file called metadata.csv (note the file must have this exact name). Each metadata line should contain the following fields with a comma between each field.
- File name (required)
- Title (if not specified, DASH! Uses file name)
- Author (if not specified, DASH! Uses “Unspecified”)
- Publisher
- Publication date (formatted YYYY/MM or YYYY)
- Publisher location (City, State, Country)
- Subject (use “|” to separate multiple subjects)
- ISBN
- LCCN
- Dewey
- OCLC #
- Language (if not specified, DASH! Uses “en” for English)
- Action (when this field contains the value “update” DASH! will update the metadata of an already uploaded file)
You are allowed to – and even encouraged to – share your DASH! collection with other libraries or on the web.
For examples of sites created by ebrary and librarians, please visit http://www.ebrary.com/corp/oa.jsp
For more information on sharing your DASH! collection, please email marketing@ebrary.com.