MIT's DSpace: a good fit for ETD's

Abstract

Developed jointly by the Hewlett-Packard Company and the MIT Libraries, DSpace is an open source software platform that enables institutions to establish a digital repository which can: *capture and describe digital works using a submission workflow module *distribute an institution's digital works over the web *enable the creation, indexing, and searching of associated metadata to locate and retrieve digital works *preserve digital works over the long term Some of the features which make DSpace an attractive fit for managing ETD's are its: *support for a variety of digital formats and content types including text, images, audio and video *flexibility in determining collection policies and workflow *ability to limit access at either the collection or the individual item level *assignment of persistent identifiers to each submitted item to ensure its retrievability far into the future *mechanism for advising submitters of the preservation support levels they can expect for their files MIT's ETD's will become one of many collections in the Libraries' DSpace community, taking advantage of the flexibility of the system to implement policies and workflow designed specifically for theses. This presentation will focus on the planning and implementation of an ETD workflow, from student author through various approval and editorial steps, until final deposit in the DSpace "archive".