Welcome to the community of DSpace users, developers, and admirers. Whether you're new to DSpace or a long-standing user, you can contribute your enthusiasm and knowlege in many ways:

• Communicate – Use the mailing lists, the DSpace Wiki and the DSpace Channel to communicate with other DSpace users and developers


• Congregate – Attend user groups, conferences, library events, developer meetings – and any other venue where DSpace users meet to share information and ideas


• Test – Download and try out beta releases; provide bug reports, experiences, feedback
  
• Develop – Contribute bug fixes, new features, developer cycles. Contributing code is far easier than you might think!


• Translate – Translate the DSpace user interface into your language, using the new language pack feature of DSpace 1.3. See the Internationalization Support page at the wiki.


• Prototype – The best way to gain support for an idea is to build and share prototype code


• Deploy – Share your experiences in deploying DSpaces in different organisations and situations, at large and small scales


• Support - Become active members on the mailing lists, answer others' queries and help solve their technical problems


• Experiment – Take the system for a spin, try it out with different types of content and scenarios; tell everyone what you find




Don't be shy! Contributions don't have to be 100% polished or perfect; no one will think any the less of you. "Share early, share often" is a well-known open source mantra. The sooner you contribute something, the sooner others can help with the polishing, and you no longer have to maintain the customisation against the evolving core DSpace platform, since it will be part of the platform!

For more ideas and activities, visit the DSpace project wiki: http://wiki.dspace.org/index.php//HowToContribute