Management and Staffing

Launching a DSpace service does not in itself require a set staffing plan. How you intend to use DSpace and what kind of services you plan to offer will determine your staffing plan for DSpace. There are certain minimal skills you’ll need on your team, such as system administration and user advocacy, and you may not need to hire new people or create new positions to meet these needs.

Your staffing plan should reflect the following:

• New staff positions that support DSpace (or tasks dispersed among several staff members)
• The impact of new DSpace responsibilities on existing library staff

New Staff Positions

This section describes the general skills and staff needed to launch DSpace. Depending on how you define your DSpace service, and who’s on hand to help build it, you may look for these skills among existing staff or hire additional resources.

These job descriptions outline the general skills sets needed on the DSpace team. While these skills need to be applied to the project, they do not need to come in the form of individual people on the staff – they can come from existing staff where applicable.

• DSpace User Support Manager
• DSpace System Manager

Impact on Existing Staff

Like any other library information service offered, all existing library staff need to have a basic understanding of DSpace – its mission and services – and to know where to locate additional information about the service. In addition, some staff will need to help out further.

The MIT Libraries’ Transition Planning report (pdf) provides a sample assessment of the impact of DSpace on library staff. Members of the DSpace Planning Team examined the impact of adding the DSpace service to the library’s resources – how it would affect each operational area of the library. See the Library Staff Training section for information on how you might train staff to handle DSpace inquiries and projects.