This page lists common questions about the DSpaceDirect hosted service. If you have additional questions not answered below or if you are interested in a service quote, please contact customerservice@duraspace.org

DSpaceDirect vs. DSpace

DSpaceDirect is a hosted version of the latest, out-of-the-box DSpace software. The service is provided by the DuraSpace non-profit organization and allows institutions of all sizes to store, organize, and manage DSpace repository content in the cloud. DSpaceDirect can be used to preserve and provide access to digital objects and makes content easily searchable by end users and easily managed by content curators.

In order to make your DSpaceDirect site easier to work with, we've slightly tweaked which out-of-the-box DSpace features are enabled or disabled by default. Below is a brief summary of our default settings for DSpaceDirect. As a DSpaceDirect customer, you may ask for a different set of features to be enabled or disabled based on your own needs.

Enabled by default in DSpaceDirect:

Disabled by default in DSpaceDirect:
 (may be enabled by request)

Please note that the above list will change over time as new features are added to DSpace.  For DSpaceDirect, our general policy is to ensure default DSpace features are always enabled. We also try to enable optional DSpace features which we feel are both widely useful and well established/stable.

Demo Repository Site

The DSpaceDirect Demo Repository offers a chance to preview a basic DSpaceDirect repository. If you would like an administrative accunt in order to test the administrative functions please create an account on the Demo repository and contact us to have the account upgraded to test the administrative features.

Subscriptions

DSpaceDirect Subscriptions are are priced based on the total GB of storage needed for your account. You can see our subscription options here. Accounts requiring storage over 250 GB require a custom quote; contact us and we will be happy to help you.

Add-On Packages

DSpaceDirect offers several optional add-on packages to help meet your repository needs. Details for each package are below, and you can review pricing on the DSpaceDirect website.

Additional Storage

DSpaceDirect can allow for up to 1 TB of total storage (both content and index) per account. 

Migrating Content 

DuraSpace can migrate content out of existing DSpace repositories (any version), or out of other systems that can export metadata to a CSV file. We cannot migrate content out of proprietary repository systems such as CONTENTdm and BePress.

For detailed information about content migration, see our Content Migration Information Sheet

Customized Submission Process & Metadata Fields

DSpaceDirect accounts include the default DSpace metadata fields, default submission fields, default OAI-PMH fields and default search, browse, and discover filters. You can review these default fields here. Your institution can customize these fields and other aspects of the submissions process (such as licenses and advanced embargoes) for a one time fee. For details see the Enhanced Submission Process and Metadata Form.

Enhanced Branding

Limited customization and branding is included in our basic subscriptions. We include up to two hours of customization work. You can see examples of basic customized DSpaceDirect sites by reviewing our sample sites: Sample Site 1 and Sample Site 2.

If you require more extensive branding, our enhanced branding add-on package increases the time spent on customization to five hours. This time can be spent to more closely match (to the extent possible) the look and feel of your institution’s web site. The enhanced branding package is an annual fee to cover the time needed to ensure your custom branding is migrated to new versions of DSpace.

For a detailed overview of what branding and customization is included in the default DSpaceDirect subscription and options for enhanced branding see our Enhanced Branding Information Sheet.

Custom URL

By default DSpaceDirect repositories have a DSpaceDirect URL: repositoryname.dspacedirect.org. If you would like to redirect to a URL on your institutions website, you can add the custom URL package for a one-time fee. Please note that in order to set up a custom URL, you must be able to manage your institution’s DNS or request changes of your institution’s DNS, as well as provide a valid SSL certificate. It is a good idea to discuss these requirements with your institution's website adminstrator prior to starting your subscription.

Local Authentication

Local authentication is available for DSpaceDirect repositories or restricted collections within a repository as part of the LDAP and Location-Based Authentication Package or the Shibboleth Authentication Package. For detailed information see the Customized Authentication Information Sheet.

Extended Support

All DSpaceDirect plans come with access to a customer support ticket system for 10 free support requests annually.  The Extended Support Package allows unlimited access to our customer support ticket system for support needs, questions, and other issues. This package is espcially useful for large migration accounts.

Security

Please see our Security FAQ.

Searching from Other Library Catalog And Discovery Systems (E.G. Ex Libris Primo, EBSCO Discovery, Etc.)

If the external service supports OAI-PMH metadata harvesting, then you could harvest your DSpaceDirect content metadata into the external system in order to make your DSpaceDirect content searchable/findable. This would mean that the external system would contain a copy of your DSpaceDirect item metadata and could therefore search your DSpaceDirect content and provide a direct link to individual items in your DSpaceDirect site. This is the route that most libraries take to make DSpace content available in a library catalog or discovery service (as most of these services support OAI-PMH harvesting from other systems, like DSpace).


For instance, according to the documentation available online:

So, simply point either of those at the DSpaceDirect OAI-PMH interface and then schedule the external service to harvest metadata from DSpaceDirect on a regular basis.

Every DSpaceDirect site has an OAI-PMH interface available at https://[dspacedirect-site-url]/oai/request?verb=Identify

For example: https://demo.dspacedirect.org/oai/request?verb=Identify


Custom Code

DSpaceDirect customers are not be able to make direct changes to the code of their DSpace site (though customers may request theme changes or similar). The DuraSpace organization handles the installation, maintenance, and upgrades of the DSpace code and the servers it is running on as part of the hosted and managed DSpaceDirect service.


Allowing customers to add customized code may complicate the upgrade process for their site, making it potentially very difficult for DuraSpace to perform an upgrade on your behalf. Further, allowing customers to have direct server access (e.g. via SSH) can also be a security concern as DuraSpace runs several customer sites on a single server. For those reasons, DuraSpace does not give customers direct access to update or modify the DSpace code for their site.


API

Currently, DSpaceDirect offers the following (out-of-the-box) DSpace APIs:

Full Text Search (I.E. Search Within Documents)

DSpaceDirect does provide full text search but only for specific document formats (PDF, Word, PowerPoint, HTML, plaintext).  Note that image-based PDFs (e.g. PDFs generated from scanning physical documents) cannot be full text searched unless they are OCRed before being deposited into DSpace.

Please note that documents are indexed in an overnight process (as this activity can take some time, depending on the quantity and size of documents). This means that you will not be able to search within the full text of documents until the next day (however, document metadata is searchable immediately). There are also (usually rare) occasions where DSpace is unable to index a supported document for full text searching. If you notice that a particular document is not searchable after a day passes, please do let us know.

Multimedia (images, video, audio)

Currently, there are no integrated media viewers (for video or audio files) in DSpaceDirect, although you are able to *store* any media file format. For images, you are also able to store any image format with DSpaceDirect, and certain image formats (BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG) will automatically have a thumbnail generated to be used within the user interface. However, there are not slideshow or image gallery capabilities.


CAS Support

DSpaceDirect does not support CAS currently. However, there was some development work being conducted in order to support CAS in the latest release of open source DSpace. The work will likely be rolled into next year's release of DSpace which at that time, would then be made available in DSpaceDirect. 

Metadata 

Dublin Core

Yes, DSpaceDirect metadata is all in Dublin Core as this is what the DSpace software uses to store metadata internally.

Metadata Export

Through the DSpaceDirect administrative interface, you can export metadata to an Excel spreadhseet or CSV file.