Here is the conclusion of my analysis of DSpace. I liked this one, I had a fun time doing it. The issue is that I use Latex and Bibtex, so I couldn’t seem to copy text from a PDF to submit it to my blog without taking off the references. But, here is a full copy of my PDF, so you can read it all if you want. I will update things when I can get the full paper translated.
Update: Full Paper below the cut, thanks to latex2rft
6 Summary of Issues and Benefits
6.0.1 Issues
As has been addressed, there are some problems with DSpace. In the first place, the software is open source. While this does come with its own benefits, it also comes with its own problems. Commercial support for the software does not exist at this time, neither for installation nor for later technical issues. Libraries used to working with commercial software or ILS vendors may find implementation difficult. Furthermore, some who have previously implemented the software have had problems with performance while updating files and with the structure of the communities, although these may have been fixed in successive releases of the software.
The major difficulty we have found is with DSpace’s handling of metadata. While we feel that the number of fields in Dublin Core is adequate for most if not all uses (DCMI Usage Board 2006), we are troubled by the lack of authority control when completing its fields. Without some control over uniform titles, authors and subjects accessing the items in the future will very problematic. However, this could be solved at an institutional policy level, with guidelines for submission and librarians or faculty having roles in the “workflow” overseeing metadata. While there is no scope in this paper for a discussion of necessity of controlled vocabulary, we will stress that this necessity does not just apply to paper documents, but to digital ones as well.
6.0.2 Benefits
Despite this fault, we do find that DSpace has many positive aspects. We find it to be an amazingly flexible and robust system which would be ready to handle almost any university’s needs right out of the box. It has the flexibility to handle all types of documents and methods of research, as well as the simplicity to encourage non-technical users towards the Open Access (OA) of scholarly research. We also feel that, given Smith’s intentions as cited above, the system would be an ready for a university to experiment in self-publishing even a part of its faculty’s research. Furthermore, while open source can have its drawbacks, it has some definite benefits. The software itself is customizable from the ground up, and any perceived problems with the system could be fixed by an institution if they so desired. If this were beyond the abilities of the institution, the software is free, has little hardware requirements, and would require little administration for a simple, uncustomized installation.
7 Conclusions
It is the goal of the developer’s of DSpace to make the collection, preservation, indexing and distribution of digital research objects simple (Smith, 2003), to the extent that it encourages researches to self-archive their own work. Despite a few drawbacks that we have noted, particularly with the lack of control over metadata, DSpace is an excellent digital repository system supported by an active community of both users and developers. Given DSpace’s flexibility to archive any type of digital object and deal with any model of research within a department or other research community, it is a highly recommended system which can only improve with further development. This flexibility is increased by the fact that DSpace is open source, and any modifications or improvements can be implemented by the institutions themselves, and those improvements can be shared with the wider research community.