Hi all, 

I've joined the list for a little while as I am working on a repository evaluation project for a client.

I am interested in support for RDF-ready metadata in EPrints in the context of an established set of external name authorities able to supply URIs for people, groups, subjects, grant-codes etc. I am aware that there is some RDF export, but this uses EPrints URIs for things, I'm interested in being able to use URIs that already exist on the ingest side.

Here's what I think would be ideal. When entering any metadata in a form, eg for a person, there is an external lookup to enable the user to pick the right entry from a remote authority. The result would be a field with all the existing EPrints fields for an author plus a URI. Same would go for subjects etc. (I was involved in implementing something like this using an opensearch lookup returning JSON on the ReDBox researcch data repository project http://www.redboxresearchdata.com.au/)

I think what I'm looking for is something like the DSpace name/value/authority metadata structure which is apparently standard.

Does the software do this, or something like this already? If not (a) is it a good idea and (b) how doable it it?