ETD Repositories Using DSpace Software Andrew Penman The Robert Gordon University 27 th September 2004

DSpace Developers and Sponsor Developed jointly by MIT Libraries and Hewlett-Packard (HP), DSpace is freely available to research institutions worldwide as an open source system.

DSpace is an open source digital asset management software platform that enables institutions to: Capture  Digital materials in any formats  Directly from creators  Large-scale, stable, managed long-term storage Describe  Descriptive, technical, rights metadata  Persistent identifiers Distribute  Via WWW, with necessary access control Preserve  Bitstream guaranteed

Basic DSpace Information Model Communities  Schools, academic departments, research departments Collections (in communities)  Distinct groupings of like items eg. ETDs Items (in collections)  Logical content objects  Receive persistent identifier Bitstreams (in items)  Individual files making up an Item  Receive preservation treatment Community CollectionItem Bitstream

DSpace and ETD Content A DSpace repository will accept all forms of digital objects. The most commonly used ETD format at present is PDF. Multimedia objects can be embedded using this method but DSpace will just as readily accept individual files in a variety of formats. For ETDs this may include:  Audio files  Video files  Datasets: statistical, geospatial, matlab, etc.  Images: photographs, diagrams, scientific, etc.  Learning objects

Some more key features… Provides customisable workflow to suit the institution Supports restricted access  Offers personalised and customisable access definable to within individual collections and communities. Long term preservation of digital works  Use of Persistent Identifiers to allow permanency of addressing Allows for content as well as metadata searching Fully documented Java APIs to allow and encourage development and interoperation with other systems and institutions

Software Requirements Completely Open-Source with all software readily, and freely, available via the web under the terms of the BSD distribution license. Relatively simple to install with a large and growing user base, to provide support through individual experiences and community cooperation. UNIX-like OS (Linux, HP/UX, Solaris) Java 1.4 > PostgreSQL 7.3 > Jakarta Tomcat 4.x/5.x Apache (optional) Comprehensive system documentation DSpace project home on sourceforge: DSpace for dummies (University of Tennessee)

Latest Version DSpace 1.2 (12/08/2004)  General Improvements Communities can contain sub-communities Items may be included in more than one collection Full text extraction and searching for MS Word, PDF, HTML, text documents Thumbnails displayed in item view for items that contain images Bitstream IDs are now persistent - generated from item's handle and a sequence number Creative Commons licenses can optionally be added to items during web submission process  Significantly improved Admin interface: New collection administration wizard Improved layout and e-people management ability DSpace 1.2 Version History

Finding out more…  Software Downloads  Installation Documents  Marketing Resources  FAQ  Links to DSpace repositories Online Tutorial  Discussion Lists  Dspace-tech 

Related work… Edinburgh University: ‘Theses Alive!’ - ‘The Tapir’ UK ETD Metadata Core set