Page History

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• Andrew suggested that DSpace 7 is a big change, a giant leap forward for the platform. It was agreed that it could be even portrayed as a rebirth or regeneration. Gail echoed this and said that DSpace has been around for a long time, but it will now be a platform based on modern technologies once again.
• It was agreed that it would be a good idea to highlight the exciting breakout features for the DSpace 7 promotion. Erik pointed out the ability to play videos and audio. GDPR compliance and the entities were also mentioned. Tim noted that the developers are currently so entrenched in DSpace that they may not have a clear idea of what is exciting anymore.  Testimonials from DSpace users about what they find exciting – even if they are not upgrading now – would be useful. There should be user-perspective videos as well. It might be also worthwhile to produce comparison charts with other platforms like Digital Commons. It would be useful to have guidance on how to use the new features.
• Gail and Barbara reminded the group that there were testimonials collected from a number of institutions excited about DSpace 7 already a while ago. These haven’t been used so far. Jenn promised to check them to see if they are still valid.
• The global outreach was seen as a challenge, as there are relatively few truly international channels that can be used and many of the discussions are on a national or regional level. The Open Repositories conferences are distributing their announcements to various lists around the world: perhaps DSpace could do something similar? Reaching out to national user groups is also important in getting the information out. In addition to Open Repositories, it would be good to have visibility at other conferences with different audiences (e.g. LIBER for European research libraries). Co-operation with COAR was also mentioned. Iryna Kuchma at EIFL would be a good starting point as well.
• It would also be useful to have a more reliable, up-to-date view on who is actually using DSpace at the moment. OJS has been able to do this somehow. It might be worthwhile to find out how. Another option would be to update the DSpace registry.
• One idea that came up was doing a community poll using the Google groups mailing lists. Since these are just lists of e-mail addresses, we don’t really know how well the DSpace members or DSpace users are represented on the lists. Community calls are also an option.
• There was also discussion whether it would make to sense reach out to the community by establishing regular community office hours during which the community members could ask questions from the developers and/or Leadership. Tim mentioned that he has tried this in the past, but there was little response. Nevertheless, he finds the concept interesting. Gail noted that there will be a lot of interest in what features (and possibly bug fixes) will be in DSpace 7.x. during the following year.

It was agreed that the marketing group should be able to develop these ideas further and come back up with a more concrete plan on how to move forward with promotional efforts.

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