DSpace


DSpace is an open source repository software package typically used for creating open access repositories for scholarly and/or published digital content. While DSpace shares some feature overlap with content management systems and document management systems, the DSpace repository software serves a specific need as a digital archives system, focused on the long-term storage, access and preservation of digital content.

History

The first public version of DSpace was released in November 2002, as a joint effort between developers from MIT and HP Labs. Following the first user group meeting in March 2004, a group of interested institutions formed the DSpace Federation, which determined the governance of future software development by adopting the Apache Foundation's community development model as well as establishing the DSpace Committer Group. In July 2007 as the DSpace user community grew larger, HP and MIT jointly formed the DSpace Foundation, a not-for-profit organization that provided leadership and support. In May 2009 collaboration on related projects and growing synergies between the DSpace Foundation and the Fedora Commons organization led to the joining of the two organizations to pursue their common mission in a not-for-profit called DuraSpace. Currently the DSpace software and user community receives leadership and guidance from DuraSpace.

Technology

DSpace is constructed with Java web applications, many programs, and an associated metadata store. The web applications provide interfaces for administration, deposit, ingest, search, and access. The asset store is maintained on a file system or similar storage system. The metadata, including access and configuration information, is stored in a relational database and supports the use of PostgreSQL and Oracle database. DSpace holdings are made available primarily via a web interface. More recent versions of DSpace also support faceted search and browse functionality using Apache Solr.

Features

Some most important features of DSpace are as follows.
DSpace software runs on Linux, Solaris, Unix, Ubuntu and Windows. It can also be installed on .
Linux is by far the most common OS for DSpace.

Notable DSpace repositories

A full list of institutional repositories using DSpace software as well as others is available via the Registry of Open Access Repositories