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For example: https://demo.dspacedirect.org/community-list
Important to understand the difference between Community & Collection
- Collections only contain Items (works or documents). In other words, you always add an Item to a Collection
- Communities are used to "organize" Collections. Communities can contain other Communities (sub-communities) or Collections (but CANNOT contain Items).
  - Often Communities are used to "mirror" the organizational structure within an institution (colleges, departments, research units, etc).
  - Communities can also be used to assign rights to specific groups (can give a department control over their own Community)
How-To: Create a new Community
- Login as an Admin
- Click "Create Community"
- Community level "metadata" (only the "Name" is required) - Any of this info can be edited/changed at a later time
  - Name: the name of the Community (REQUIRED)
  - Short Description: A short "blurb" about this community (only displayed during search/browse as a very basic description)
  - Introductory text: The longer description about the Community displayed on its homepage (may include basic HTML if you want to add formatting, e.g. bold text, hyperlinks, etc)
  - Copyright text: If this Community needs a special note regarding copyright, one can be added (may include basic HTML). For example, if all works in this Community are copyrighted by a particular publisher/department it can be noted here.
  - News: Optional news section which will be displayed below the introductory text.
  - Logo: Optionally, a Community can have its own logo
- Click "Create"
- Once created, you are immediately moved to the "Edit Community" interface, so that you can assign roles if you wish.
  - For Communities, the only "Role" is Administrator. An "Administrator" has full rights (add/update/delete) on this Community and any Sub-Communities, Collections or Items that are contained within the hierarchy under this Community.
- Click "Return"
How-To: Create a new Collection
- Browse to the newly created Community.
- Notice the "Context" menu has different options (HINT: The "Context" menu's options change based on where you are in the system.)
  - Edit Community
  - Export Community (only for Admins - exports all content/metadata into a Zip file)
  - Export Metadata (used for bulk/batch metadata editing in a CSV)
  - Create Collection
  - Create Sub-Community (A Sub-Community is just a Community that happens to be within another Community...it's no different than a normal Community)
- Click "Create Collection"
- Collection level "metadata" (nearly identical to the Community metadata). Only a few (minor) additions:
  - License: If this Collection requires its own custom deposit license (i.e. it needs to be different from the site-wide deposit license), you can enter that license text here. It will be displayed during the deposit process instead of the normal deposit license. (This option is rarely used)
  - Provenance: An Administrator-only field which can be used to describe or add notes about the history/provenance of this particular collection. It is never visible to users.
- Click "Create"
- Again, once created, you are immediately moved to the "Edit Collection" interface, so that you can assign roles if you wish.
  - Assign Roles: Collections offer additional Roles (all are optional):
    - Administrators - people who have full rights (add/update/delete) on this Collection and any Items contained in this Collection
    - Submitters - people who can deposit new content to this Collection
    - Default read access - people who can view/download any new content added to this collection (not retroactive - changing this does NOT automatically change view/download rights on existing items in the Collection)
    - Reviewer roles: There are three roles which have to do with reviewing newly deposited content (before it becomes publicly available). All are optional. If you enable multiple steps, they will always occur in the order that they are listed (and people added to that step will receive an email whenever new content is added that needs review)
      - Accept / Reject step
      - Accept / Reject / Edit Metadata step
      - Edit Metadata step
  - Content Source:
    - Optionally, a Collection can be setup to "harvest" all of its content from an external location (via OAI-PMH and/or OAI-ORE). This is rarely used, unless your DSpace is aggregating content from other locations.
  - Curate:
    - This tab offers some basic "curation" / reporting scripts that can be run across your content. By default only a few reporting scripts are available (unless you have DuraCloud backups available)
      - Profile Bitstream Formats : Report what file formats are contained in Items within this Community/Collection
      - Check for Required Metadata : Double check all Item metadata, ensuring all required fields are filled out.
      - Check Links in Metadata : Double check all URLs in Item metadata, ensuring all links are still valid (and none throw a 404 Not Found error)
How-To: Hide a Community or Collection from Public View/Restrict Access to an Existing Community/Collection
- Unfortunately, Communities/Collections *always* show up in Browse by Community/Collection. However, you can access restrict a Collection to Administrators, so no one else can access the Collection homepage, etc. We have an example at https://demo.dspacedirect.org/handle/10673/337
- To create a Collection only visible to Administrators, you'll edit the Policies on the Collection.
  - Click "Edit Collection"
  - Click "Assign Roles"
  - Click "Edit authorization policies directly" (link at bottom)
  - Change all policies to list "Administrator" group instead of "Anonymous"
  - Click "Save"
- This change is NOT retroactive to existing items in a Community or Collection. to restrict access to an existing Community or Collection, follow the steps above and then follow the steps described here: Batch Permission Change

Adding/Submitting Items

Items are what you will be working with the MOST (after you get your Communities/Collections setup). They contain metadata and, optionally, bitstreams (files).
Two ways to submit an Item to a Collection
- From your "Submissions" page (in the "My Account" box).
- OR, browse to a Collection that you have rights to deposit into, and click the "Submit a new item to this collection" link
How-To: Submit an Item
- It is a multi-stage process.
  - You can "Save & Exit" at any time (your changes are also auto-saved each time you transition to a new page). You can restart any unfinished submissions from your My Account "Submissions" page
  - You can also move backwards if you realized you forgot something in a previous step
  - NOTE: These deposit steps can be tweaked/changed/rearranged, but any changes must be performed by DuraSpace (for an additional fee, depending on the extent of the changes)
- Step 1: Initial Questions
  - Captures some basic info to determine what metadata to ask the user for
- Step 2-3: Describe (x 2)
  - Captures the basic metadata about this new item on two pages. Only Title & Date are required (Date is auto-captured though, unless you say the item was previously published)
  - Behind the scenes this metadata is all stored as Qualified Dublin Core
- Step 4: Upload
  - Optionally, upload one (or more) files to this item.
    - File Description can just be used to optionally describe the file contents (e.g. "Presentation slides" or "Video of talk")
  - Optionally, add an embargo date. If an embargo date is added, then the file will not be downloadable/viewable until after that embargo date has passed. (Administrators can still access the file)
- Step 5: Review - just review everything previously entered (with an option to modify anything)
- Step 6: License
  - This is the deposit license which all users must agree to before they can deposit their item.
  - NOTE: An electronically-signed copy of the deposit license is actually stored within the deposited item. (The copy is "signed" with the name of the user who agreed to the license & the date)
- Step 7: Complete
  - Once complete, one of two things will happen:
    - IF the Collection has one or more "Review steps" enabled, then the Item will go into an "approval workflow". It will not be publicly available until the review is complete. If the item is rejected the submitter will be notified
      - The submitter can check the status of the review process from their My Account "Submissions" page
    - If no "Review steps" are enabled, then the Item is available immediately.

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DSpaceDirect supports two primary types of usage statistics:
- Google Analytics (if enabled) - DSpace can use Google Analytics to track page views/accesses with the system. This is similar to using Google Analytics to tracking any other website. This is similar to using Google Analytics to tracking any other website. The use of Google Analytics is recommended. Google Analytics more thoroughly weeds out spider and bot activity, resulting in more accurate statistics.
- DSpace Internal Statistics - DSpace also tracks its own basic Usage, Workflow & Search statistics.
DSpace Statistics are available site-wide, or on any specific Community, Collection or Item page. Based on where you are in the system, you will receive a slightly different statistical report.
NOTE: By default, DSpace Internal Statistics are ONLY available to Administrators. If you desire, DuraSpace can instead make them publicly available for your site. Unfortunately, at this time, there are only two options: private (Admin only) or public.
How-To: View Site-Wide DSpace Statistics
- Browse to the homepage (logged in as an Admin)
- Notice the "Statistics" box has three options:
  - DSpace Usage Statistics: At the homepage level, this gives a general count of "hits" for individual Items in the system. The report is extremely basic at this time and only lists the title of the Item.
  - DSpace Search Statistics: At the homepage level, this provides a summary of recent searches performed via the DSpace search box. There are also some historical reporting options.
  - DSpace Workflow Statistics: At the homepage level, this provides a general count of any approval workflows/reviews that have taken place. There are also some historical reporting options. NOTE: If you do not use Workflow Reviewer Roles on any Collections, this report will always be empty.)
How-To: View DSpace Community/Collection Statistics
- Browse to a specific Community or Collection
- The "Statistics" box has the same three options, but now the results will be specific to this Community/Collection (and provide extra details)
  - DSpace Usage Statistics: At the Community/Collection level, this report provides extra detail about accesses of this Community/Collection page. You'll now get a summary of total hits to the Community/Collection homepage, along with monthly trends, and top countries/cities (where the hits are coming from)
  - DSpace Search Statistics: At the Community/Collection level, this provides a summary of recent searches performed via the DSpace search box (specific to this Community or Collection).
  - DSpace Workflow Statistics: At the Community/Collection level, this provides a general count of any approval workflows/reviews that have taken place (specific to this Community or Collection) (NOTE: If you do not use Workflow Reviewer Roles on any Collections, this report will always be empty.)
How-To: View DSpace Item Statistics
- Browse to a specific Item
- The "Statistics" box has just one option, but now the results will be specific to this Item (and provide extra details)
  - DSpace Usage Statistics: At the Item level, this report provides extra detail about usage of the Item. You'll now get a summary of total hits to the Community/Collection homepage, along with monthly trends, number of file downloads and top countries/cities (where the hits are coming from)
  - NOTE: Items do not have Search/Workflow statistics as both of those statistical reports are only applicable to Communities & Collections.
How-To: View/Analyze Page Visits (hits) in Google Analytics
- In Google Analytics, this info is under the "Behavior -> Site Content -> All Pages" section. It should allow you to easily see the top pages visited, and filter that list based on a page name or path.
- For example, to analyze the number of visits/hits on a single item's homepage (i.e the number of people who viewed the item metadata) ..
  - Either filter this list by putting in the URL of the item page into the searchbox
  - OR, click on "Page Title" as the "Primary Dimension" and put the title of the Item into the searchbox
How-To: View/Analyze File Downloads in Google Analytics
- File downloads are recorded as "events" in Google Analytics. So, this info is under the "Behavior -> Events -> Pages" section. By default it'll show the top URLs used to download Items, but it also provides ways to filter that information based on page name or URL.
- For example, to analyze the number of file downloads for a single item (even if it if it has multiple files)
  - Either filter this list by putting in the URL of the item into the searchbox,
  - OR, click on "Page Title" as the "Primary Dimension" and put the title of the Item into the searchbox
  - In the results, clicking on the title will bring you to a page that lists downloads per file (if the item has multiple files)
  - Either filter this list by putting in the URL of the item into the searchbox,
  - OR, click on "Page Title" as the "Primary Dimension" and put the title of the Item into the searchbox
How-To: View Total Number of Items in a Repository
- The total number of items in the repository is most easily found by navigating to Browse by Title, as title is a required field.
How-To: View the Number of Items Added in a Year
- Unfortunately, the built-in DSpace statistics and Google Analytics do not list this data. The easiest way to determine the number of items added in a given time frame is to export the repository metadata to CSV, and look at the dc.date.accessioned in that export. The dc.date.accessioned field is not included by default in metadata exports from DSpaceDirect repositories; please contact support@dspacedirect.org if you would like to be able to export this field.

Bulk/Batch Metadata Editing

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DSpace provides an "Advanced Policy Manager" (also known as the "item wildcard policy admin tool"), which allows an Administrative user to perform bulk permissions changes to all of the Items or Files (bitstreams) within a specified Collection.
- For more information on permissions / policy settings in general, please also refer to the section "Individual Item Permissions Changes" above.
WARNING: This Advanced Policy Manager is a bit of a "beta-level" tool. It works, but it's not the most user friendly page in DSpace. It's also not the smartest tool, so you need to sometimes take several steps to make the changes you want to make.
How-To: Batch Permissions Changes basics
- Sample Use Case: The easiest way to explain how this tool works is via a common use-case. Suppose that you have a Collection of open access (viewable/readable to anyone in the world) Items which you now want to restrict to only be viewable to a group of users called "On Campus Users". Here's the steps you would take to perform that change:
  - Login to your site as an Administrator
  - Under the "Administrative" side menu, click on "Authorizations" (under Access Control submenu)
  - Just under the box at the top of the page, click the link that says "Click here to go to the item wildcard policy admin tool"
  - Step 1: Remove existing metadata access rights for all Items in the specified Collection. To do so, fill out the form as follows:
    - Description: (optional, usually is left blank as it's only really useful for bulk changes to embargo)
    - Group: (leave blank in this case as you will remove any existing permissions)
    - Action: READ (you want to remove "READ" access)
    - Content Type: Item (you want to remove READ access on an Item level – this controls metadata access)
    - Collection: [select the collection]
    - Start Date: (leave blank - this is only useful for bulk-changes to embargo dates)
    - End Date: (leave blank - this is only useful for bulk-changes to embargo dates)
    - CLICK the "Clear Policies" button
    - (NOTE: Even though you get no confirmation screen, the changes will be immediately applied)
  - In Step #1, essentially all we've done is remove access to the Item metadata. The metadata is now only visible (readable) by Administrators. However, the content files within those Items are unfortunately still accessible (if someone had bookmarked the URL)
  - Step 2: Remove existing content file access rights for all Items in the specified Collection. To do so, fill out the form as follows:
    - Description: (optional, usually is left blank as it's only really useful for bulk changes to embargo)
    - Group: (leave blank in this case as you will remove any existing permissions)
    - Action: READ (you want to remove "READ" access)
    - Content Type: bitstream (you want to remove READ access on the files, or bitstreams)
    - Collection: [select the collection]
    - Start Date: (leave blank - this is only useful for bulk-changes to embargo dates)
    - End Date: (leave blank - this is only useful for bulk-changes to embargo dates)
    - CLICK the "Clear Policies" button
    - (NOTE: Even though you get no confirmation screen, the changes will be immediately applied)
  - In Step #2, we've also removed access to the Item files. This means that only Administrators can now access/download any files associated with the Items. Now, we need to assign NEW permissions for our "On Campus Users" group in the following two steps.
  - Step 3: Give the "On Campus Users" group access to all metadata for all Items in the specified Collection. To do so, fill out the form as follows:
    - Description: (optional, usually is left blank as it's only really useful for bulk changes to embargo)
    - Group: Select the "On Campus Users" group
    - Action: READ (you want to add "READ" access to the selected group)
    - Content Type: item (you want to add READ access on Items)
    - Collection: [select the collection]
    - Start Date: (leave blank - this is only useful for bulk-changes to embargo dates)
    - End Date: (leave blank - this is only useful for bulk-changes to embargo dates)
    - CLICK the "Add Policies" button
    - (NOTE: Even though you get no confirmation screen, the changes will be immediately applied)
  - In Step #3, we've now given the "On Campus Users" group the ability to read the metadata for all Items in this collection. So, the final step is to also give them the ability to read/download files associated with these Items.
  - Step 4: Finally, give the "On Campus Users" group access to all files for all Items in the specified Collection. To do so, fill out the form as follows:
    - Description: (optional, usually is left blank as it's only really useful for bulk changes to embargo)
    - Group: Select the "On Campus Users" group
    - Action: READ (you want to add "READ" access to the selected group)
    - Content Type: bitstream (you want to add READ access on all files, or bitstreams)
    - Collection: [select the collection]
    - Start Date: (leave blank - this is only useful for bulk-changes to embargo dates)
    - End Date: (leave blank - this is only useful for bulk-changes to embargo dates)
    - CLICK the "Add Policies" button
    - (NOTE: Even though you get no confirmation screen, the changes will be immediately applied)
  - At the end of this process, all the Items (and their Files) in the selected Collection will now only be accessible to users who belong to your "On Campus Users" group. Other non-Administrative users will be presented with an Access Restricted message.

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Versions Compared

Old Version 34

New Version 38

Key

Adding/Submitting Items

Bulk/Batch Metadata Editing