Building an Institutional Repository with DSpace

Each DSpace implementation is unique. While the technology is fairly easy to install and setup, designing and building your institutional repository service with DSpace requires planning upfront, before you build the technology platform and launch your service.

Planning & Implementing an Institutional Repository

To help you plan and build your DSpace implementation, we offer planning tools and content focused on each stage of your DSpace project:

• Defining Your DSpace Service Offering
  DSpace is a flexible and powerful system. Before you build the technology platform, decide how your university will use DSpace – what kinds of content it will store and who can contribute to it.
  
• Implementing and Operating DSpace
  This comprehensive documentation helps you plan for, install, and build on the DSpace technology.
  
• Creating a Service Support Infrastructure
  Each university decides how DSpace fits into its library and university. In this section, we offer guidelines for important policy planning, staffing, and operations decisions your university faces.
  
• Marketing the DSpace Service
  As you launch the DSpace service, you need to build awareness on campus and sell the idea of DSpace to faculty, staff, and end users.
  
• Building Communities and Collections
  In building a DSpace service, you may want to run a trial period among a small group of content groups, or communities, on campus.

In each of these sections, you’ll find content and tools to help you plan and build a DSpace service. For an overview of the planning process, see the Project Planning Timeline (pdf).

Case Studies

Learn how the staff of the MIT Libraries launched their DSpace implementation. Meet some of the DSpace staff and see how they met the organizational, technical, and management challenges of building a digital repository. See the MIT Case Study (pdf).

Also see the DSpace Federation Project's year-end report (pdf) for the Mellon Foundation, which includes short case studies on each participating university.

Lessons Learned

A number of universities are currently developing DSpace services. We’ve gathered some lessons learned to share the benefit of their experience with other DSpace teams. We'd like to hear from you about what worked well, or not so well, on your project. Add your lessons learned to the DSpace Wiki.