DCAT Meeting October 2026

Code of Conduct

All DSpace meetings follow the Lyrasis Code of Conduct. We ask you to remain respectful in all discussions. We also encourage you to report any violations to Lyrasis (see Code of Conduct for details).

What is DCAT?

The DSpace Community Advisory Team (DCAT) represents the interests of repository managers and administrators across the globe and, indirectly, DSpace end users. DCAT is a permanent DSpace Working Group sponsored by the DSpace Steering Group that advises DSpace Program governance groups. We welcome feedback and participation from anyone in the community.

Date & Time

Tuesday, October 13, 2026, 12:00 Eastern Time 16:00-17:00 UTC
See the world clock to determine the meeting time for your location.
Meeting length: one hour

Join information:

We will be using the DCAT Chair's Zoom Room for our meeting.

NOTE: there is a new passcode to enter the meeting: dspace2025

Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://umn.zoom.us/j/95455262817?pwd=Z3o5BexR7gsspIzDiP7beexkthKR4i.1 (Meeting ID: 954 5526 2817) Passcode: dspace2025

Additional ways to join: DCAT Chair Zoom Room

Agenda and Notes:

Housekeeping
- Sign up for the DCAT Google Group: https://groups.google.com/g/DSpaceCommunityAdvisoryTeam
- Do you have a DSpace wiki account? Email wikihelp@lyrasis.org for an account
- DSpace Community Events Calendar: https://dspace.org/events/
- DSpace Slack channel: https://dspace-org.slack.com

Announcements
- Upcoming Webinar: How to Register DOIs in DSpace through DataCite
  - November 17, 2026, at 15:00 UTC
  - Registration link: https://datacite.org/event/datacite-dois-in-dspace-getting-started/ (Note: Event registration is handled by DataCite)
- Northeast Institutional Repository Day 2026 (NIRD26) - Call for Proposals (deadline extended to Thursday, October 15)
  - December 3rd and 4th, 2026
  - Time: 12/3 afternoon ET (UTC -5); 12/4 morning ET (UTC -5)
  - Virtual event (Zoom link will be provided to registrants)

Discussion
- DSpace North American User Group
  - Highlights or items to share?
- Testathon Test Plan Platform Migration Task Force
  - Help move individual tests from the spreadsheet to a corresponding GitHub issue
  - Help with training and documentation for this new Testathon format
  - Help update test descriptions to make them more clear and understandable.
  - Help with other tasks or projects as time or skill allow.
- DSpace SAF Builder – Community Tool Introduction
  - Open-source, cross-platform desktop application for creating Simple Archive Format (SAF) ZIP packages and DSpace-format metadata CSV files. The tool includes a Dublin Core editor, spreadsheet import, and a built-in field reference, and operates entirely offline. It is MIT-licensed and available on GitHub: https://github.com/jcasdeveloper/dspace-saf-builder.
  - Joyjit is sharing the tool with the DSpace community to gather feedback and explore how it might be useful to repository managers
  - See two images:

Next Meeting: November 10, 2026

Notes:

Feedback from DSpace User Group Meeting
- Nice to see everyone
- Interesting conversations and presentations on Entities
- Potential ways to continue the Entities conversation / build capacity for Entities implementation:
  - DSpace Entities Interest Group (similar to the DSpace PID Group)
    - Charter for PID group was created by DSpace steering, took about 4 months to develop
  - List of Entity adopting institutions and organizations
  - Webinar/presentations
  - Use cases on DSpace wiki
- Entities resources
  - Scholaris Metadata & Discovery Group - Entities Guidance versions 1 and 2 (in draft, to be published later fall)
  - Past 4Science webinar:
    https://youtu.be/3plqMMarvJ8?si=ICaKWxX2zGmX4jtm
- Discussion of Interoperability Registry
  - New - mentioned at DNAUG
  - List of institutions that have integrations with multiple Lyrasis platforms (e.g., DSpace, ASpace, CollectionsSpace, etc.)
DSpace Testathon
- Call for volunteers
- More details to come!
SAF Builder presentation
- New open source tool
- Community tool developed by peer - hope to gauge interest in the community to integrate this tool in DSpace
- Gain feedback from DCAT; if it is a useful tool for IR managers.
  - SAF Creator is a frequently used tool: it would be helpful to have a user friendly tool to be available in DSpace (natively)
  - Could assist digitization and batch-loading processes for IR managers. Could also assist with duplicate detection during bulk ingests.
- How would this tool work - pragmatically speaking? How about implementation?
  - Reliability?
  - Data duplication detection available via DSpace-CRIS
- Appears to be substantial DCAT interest in this tool.
Question about Update Cycles and Process
- Examples of upgrade communications:
  - Scholaris: 9.4 Upgrade
  - Texas Digital Library: 9.3 Upgrade
- Interest in continuing to use a 'New Feature' flag for the DSpace Testathon for D10, D11.