DSpace@MIT Features

DSpace@MIT lets you save, share, and search research data in an institutional repository. This page outlines the features the service provides.

MIT's Institutional Repository

DSpace@MIT is organized to accommodate the multidisciplinary and organizational needs of a large institution. DSpace@MIT provides access to the digital work of the whole Institute through one interface. DSpace@MIT is organized into Communities, Sub-Communities, and Collections, each of which retains its identity within the repository.

Customization for DSpace@MIT communities and collections allows for flexibility in determining policies and workflow.

Digital Formats and Content Types Supported

DSpace@MIT accepts all manner of digital formats. Some examples of items that DSpace@MIT can accommodate are:

• Documents, such as articles, preprints, working papers, technical reports, conference papers
• Books
• Theses
• Data sets
• Computer programs
• Visualizations, simulations, and other models
• Multimedia publications
• Books
• Bibliographic datasets
• Images
• Audio files
• Video files
• Learning objects
• Web pages

Digital Preservation

• DSpace@MIT provides long-term physical storage and management of digital items in a secure, professionally managed repository including standard operating procedures such as backup, mirroring, refreshing media, and disaster recovery.
• DSpace@MIT assigns a persistent identifier to each contributed item to ensure it is retrievable far into the future.
• DSpace@MIT provides a mechanism for advising content contributors of the preservation support levels they can expect for the files they submit.

Access Control

The DSpace software allows contributors to limit access to items in DSpace@MIT — at the collection and the individual item level. See MIT's policies governing access.

Search and Retrieval

The DSpace@MIT submission process allows for the description of each item using a qualified version of the Dublin Core metadata schema. These descriptions are entered into a relational database, which is used by the search engine to retrieve items.

Open Source Software

The DSpace open source platform is freely available at SourceForge through the BSD license. Institutions around the world use DSpace to store their digital research materials. Visit the DSpace Wiki to see which institutions are running DSpace services.