Completely customizable to fit your needs

Some of the key ways you can customize the DSpace application to suit your needs are as follows:

User interface -

You can fully customize the look and feel of your DSpace website so it will integrate seamlessly with your own institution's website and can be more intuitive for your users.  This is possible by using the Manakin extension, which is new to release 1.5. 

Ability to customize the metadata -

Dublin core is the default metadata format within the DSpace application, however you can add or change any field to customize it for you application. DSpace currently supports any non hierarchal flat name space.  However, it is possible to ingest other hierarchal metadata schemas into DSpace such as MARC and MODS.  This requires using  tools such as crosswalk and having some technical capability to map the transfer of data.  DSpace is OAI-PMH compatible.

Ability to configure Browse and Search -

You can decide what fields you would like to display for browsing, such as author, title, date etc. on your DSpace website.  You can also select any metadata fields you would like included in the search interface.  All of the text within a given item and metadata associated with the item, are indexed for full text search if desired. 

Configurable database -

You can choose either Postgres or Oracle for the database which DSpace manages items and metadata.

Ability to choose the default language -

The DSpace web application is available in over twenty languages so if english is not the local language you can customize.