Simon Willison’s Weblog

Dspace

9th November 2002

Dspace (via Swannie) is an open source platform that helps institutions archive, manage and distribute “digital works” over the long term. It appears to be a variant on the idea of a content management system, but with a heavy emphasis on academic works and multiple formats. The system is implemented in Java (with a JSP front end) and uses a PostgreSQL for the metadata (based on Dublin Core) and relataional information. The assets can be stored in a variety of ways (filesystems, WebDAV, database BLOBS are all mentioned) via an abstraction layer known as a “bitstream”. The system was developed by MIT and HP and has gone live for use by MIT’s academic departments. Interesting stuff.