DSpace digital repositories

February 22, 2006 9:04 AM

Well over 100 universities around the world have set up searchable digital repositories to make available journal articles, datasets, theses and other academic materials using the DSpace repository system. DSpace at MIT alone hosts over 11,000 theses. Also, the software running the sites is freely available and open source.
posted by cog_nate (12 comments total)

Overwhelming and awesome.
posted by OmieWise at 9:28 AM on February 22, 2006

I love the title of this MIT one: Of life cycles real and imaginary : the unexpectedly long old age of optical lithography
posted by OmieWise at 9:33 AM on February 22, 2006

Good resource, thanks cog_nate.
posted by biffa at 9:34 AM on February 22, 2006

A treasure trove! Thank you cog_nate.
posted by nickyskye at 10:04 AM on February 22, 2006

The timing of this post is absolutely perfect for me. Thanks!
posted by amro at 10:08 AM on February 22, 2006

Many more universities use DSpace or something similar, but unfortunately do not or cannot make their repositories available to the public (or often even to students) due to copyright reasons... sad really.
posted by beerbajay at 10:25 AM on February 22, 2006

I actually think this might be useful for me to keep track of family photos. Thanks to the magic of digital photography, I already have 1.7gb of 1600x1400 JPGs from the first 6 months of my twin's lives...at some point, organizing by date becomes less than optimal.

Thanks for the post.
posted by davejay at 11:13 AM on February 22, 2006

Unfortunately at least some of the MIT theses are print protected pdfs - i.e. looky but no printy. Seems kinda counter to DSpace - open source but not open information :(
posted by carter at 11:29 AM on February 22, 2006

An alternative to DSpace is FEDORA. It's a little more general-purpose than DSpace but has some pretty sweet features.

Caveat: while I am on in any way related to FEDORA development, the project with which I work is using it in a few interesting ways. It is also the leading candidate for our university-wide repository.
posted by Fezboy! at 2:12 PM on February 22, 2006

I forgot to add that it is also open source.
posted by Fezboy! at 2:12 PM on February 22, 2006

There's a few alternatives - check out Eprints if you are interested in this area.
posted by grahamwell at 3:25 AM on February 23, 2006

A couple more links for anyone interested in this area - The Budapest Open Access Initiative from the Soros foundation, and from the UK JISC A digital repository WIKI and FAQ. On a superficial purview the impression is one of well-intentioned chaos, I'd love to be corrected on that.
posted by grahamwell at 3:34 AM on February 23, 2006