Comparison: DSpace 7.x versus DSpace 6.x

Owned by Kristi Park
Last updated: Dec 11, 2023
8 min read

This document is intended to provide a high-level comparison of certain features in the DSpace 7 User Interface with DSpace 6, and briefly note several new features in DSpace 7.

EXISTING DSPACE 6 FEATURES

Feature

DSpace 6.3-snapshot (currently hosted version)

DSpace 7.x

Administrative Menu

  • Administrative menu located on the right sidebar after login.

  • Administrative menu located on the left sidebar after login.

screenshot of admin menu left sidebar

  • The menu can be expanded by clicking the double arrow (>>) at the bottom and can be “pinned” to remain expanded.

screenshot showing expanded admin menu in left sidebar

 

Single Item Submission

  • Submit a New Item or Start a New Submission is located in each collection or through the Submissions page in the right sidebar.

  • Options for Save & Exit or Next > functionality in bottom navigation.

  • Browse functionality to upload a new file.

  • Submissions are viewed in Submissions page in right sidebar.

 

  • Submit a New Item is in the left sidebar, under “+ New” and selecting “Item” and choosing the Collection.

  • Options for Delete, Save, Save for Later, or Deposit are in the bottom navigation bar.

  • Drag and drop to select file.

  • Submissions can be viewed under “My DSpace” in the top right profile icon menu.

 

Batch metadata editing

  • Export metadata is under Context in the right sidebar.

  • Automatically exports metadata for the Community or Collection you are in.

  • Automatic download.

  • Import metadata option under Content Administration.

  • You will see a preview of your changes that you have to approve before final changes are made.

  • Export and Import menus in the left sidebar, and then select Metadata.

  • Select Community or Collection

  • After exporting or importing you are redirected to the Process page.

  • You must click on the file to download (.csv). Make edits to the .csv and upload back to repository.

  • NOTE: Must uncheck Validate Only box.

  • Refresh Process page to check that it is completed.

  • No preview of changes.

  • After the process is completed you can view changes.

Batch ingest

  • Batch Import (zip) from the right sidebar. 

  • Terms used are the same as in DSpace 6.

  • Batch Import (zip) in the left sidebar.

  • NOTE: Must uncheck Validate Only box.

  • You can search by the Collection name.

  • Refresh Process page to check that it is completed.

  • No preview of changes.

  • After the process is complete you can view changes.

Homepage

  • All Communities are listed on the homepage regardless of number.

  • Navigation links are in the right sidebar.

 

 

  • The number of communities listed on the homepage is configurable. The default number of Communities listed on TDL-hosted repository homepage is 20.

  • If the repository has more than 20 communities, a user must scroll through the rest of the Community list. For example, se screenshot below:

     

  • Navigation links are in the header rather than the sidebar.

  • On first visit to the site, a pop-up window asks user to agree to use of personal information.

 

Footer

  • Most TDL-hosted repositories have both a “Contact Us” and “Send Feedback” links in the footer.

  • On many repositories at least one of these is going to support@tdl.org.

  • D7 has a single “Send Feedback” link in the footer. When TDL upgrades to D7, this link will go to a contact email provided by the member institution.

  • The footer also includes links to Cookie Settings.

 

Editing items

  • Select from a drop-down to add a new metadata field.

  • Button for “Add” to add a new field

  • Manually start typing the metadata field for suggestions in a drop-down.

  • Right sidebar button to “Edit” existing field.

  • Must click “Edit/Add” button again to save changes/edits in metadata

  • Bitstreams: Can upload; Vocabulary is changed (e.g., Content = Original)

  • Select format (or use suggested, IIIF options for images)

  • To delete a bitstream, must click “Delete” (trash icon) and “Save”

Metadata and format registries

  • When editing an item in the registry, a new page pops up to make changes and updates.

  • More of them (IIIF, OpenAire)

  • When editing an item in the metadata registry, the options at the top of the page change. Select which, make changes, and save.

  • Editing format registry items works similar to 6.

Curation Tasks

  • Used to be completed in the command line

  • Curation Task in admin sidebar allows for RTS and limited 

  • Processes - can run Curation Tasks and more scripts 

  • No RTS curation tasks at this time

  • Curation Task are in the admin sidebar

Administrative search / Access to Withdrawn or Private Items

In DSpace 6, a Repository Administrator can search for items in several different places in the admin menu under Content Administration:

  • Items (search by an item ID or handle)

  • Withdrawn items (a list of withdrawn items)

  • Private items (a list of private items)

 

DSpace 7 combines administrative Item Search with access to withdrawn and private items in a single user interface called “Admin Search.”

Repository Administrators can use this interface to search across the repository, or within specific Collections, and perform actions on them (including withdrawing, deleting, or making private).

The interface includes filters that allow you to drill down into search results by access status (e.g. Withdrawn, Private), author, subject, date, and whether the item has files.

 

Resource: DSpace 7 Administrative Search Lightning Tutorial by Atmire

Statistics

  • View Statistics located in the right sidebar.

  • Once logged in, there are options to View Usage Statistics, View Search Statistics, or View Workflow Statistics

  • View Statistics located in the top navigation.

  • View Total Visits per Community, or go to the Community, Collection, or Item  itself and select Statistics in the top navigation to see Total Visits, Total visits per month, Top country views, or Top city views.

  • Search Statistics and Workflow Statistics are no longer included in DSpace 7.

Creation of Communities and Collections

  • Control panel on the right sidebar.

  • Template immediately comes up.  For a new community.  To set up for a sub-community you must navigate TO the master community, etc.

  • You must upload the logo into place

  • You can also assign roles and Curate BEFORE clicking ‘update’

 

  • Control panel on the left sidebar, click “+ New” and select Community or Collection.

  • There is an extra step to determine if this is a community or a sub-community for a different top level community.  This does save a step.

  • Difference is that you can drop the community logo or .jpeg into place

  • Metadata fields are the same as DSPACE 6.  HOWEVER, you can not assign Roles or Curate until After you Click Save

  • You must first create the community and then click the ‘edit’ icon in order to Assign Roles or Curate

Creating a collection

  • Difference – it has Provenance field

  • Up pops Assign Roles, Contents Source and Curate

 

  • No Provenance field,  but you do have an ‘Entity Type’ that has a drop down box. Choose from: Publication, Person, Project, OrgUnit, Journal, Journal Volume and Journal Issue

    • NOTE: once an Entity Type is chosen for a collection, it cannot be edited. Collection entity types determine Item entity types within that collection.

  • Like Communities, you must first CREATE the collection before you can: Edit Metadata, Assign Roles, Content Source, Curate Authorizations, Item Mapper. Authorizations and Item Mapper are new.

Facets

  • Users can drill down into contents via Facets (e.g. Subject, Author, etc) appearing on the right side sidebar. 

  • These facets appear on the repository homepage, Community homepages, Collection homepages, and Search Results pages.

  • Facets do not appear on Community and Collection homepages or the repository homepage. They only appear on a Search Results page. (This is logged as a bug and will likely change in a future release.)

 

Simple Item View

File descriptions (if included in metadata) appear in the simple item view in place of file names.

As of DSpace 7.6, file descriptions do not appear in the simple item view, only file names. This may change in a future DSpace 7 release.

 

 

 

NEW FEATURES IN DSPACE 7

IIIF SUPPORT

  • DSpace 7 supports IIIF with the Mirador viewer, and TDL has installed a IIIF server with the demo instance.

  • The IIIF viewer must be enabled at the item level. To do that, you must add the metadata field “dspace.iiif.enabled” to the item metadata with the value “true.”

IMPERSONATING A USER 

  • A Repository Administrator can log in as any other user and take action (including viewing their workflow queue) as that user.

    • This feature was available in DSpace 6, but not enabled in TDL-hosted repositories. It will not be configured by default but can be requested via a Helpdesk ticket.

CONFIGURABLE ENTITIES

  • DSpace 7 includes a Configurable Entities object model, which allows for the creation of new item types, and storing relationships between Items. This feature will allow for tighter integration with external identifier systems (e.g. ORCID), current research information systems (CRIS), journal publishing systems, etc.

    • To understand Configurable Entities, it’s helpful to understand the DSpace Data Model (i.e. the way data is organized in DSpace):

      • Each DSpace site is divided into Communities, which can be further divided into Sub-communities reflecting the typical university structure of college, department, research center, or laboratory. Communities (or sub-communities) contain Collections, which are groupings of related content. Each Collection is composed of Items, which are the basic archival elements of the archive. The “Item” element is comprised of one or more files, descriptive and other metadata, a license, and can have a unique identifier (e.g. a handle or DOI).

  • In DSpace 6 (and previous versions)

    • The ITEM element is a generic entity. It is intended as a catch-all container for articles/images/papers or anything else you might archive in the repository. You cannot configure the structure of an item to do anything special, and it can’t be connected to other items in the repository, at least not through machine-readable means. 

    • These generic Items are organized in Collections in DSpace.

  • In DSpace 7 (and beyond)

    • Different types of items, other than the generic Item can be configured. The configuration of “typed” items is what is meant by Configurable Entities. 

    • For example:  In addition to the generic Item entity, you might configure a PERSON entity type, a PROJECT entity type, a PUBLICATION entity type, etc. Each entity type can have its own descriptive metadata fields, identifier, etc. And machine-readable relationships can then be created between these “typed” items.

    • Just as in DSpace 6, items are organized within Collections. So PERSON items must be stored in a Collection configured to hold PERSON items.

    • DSpace 7 comes out-of-the-box with a few Entity types: PERSON, PUBLICATION, PROJECT and ORGANIZATIONAL UNIT.

    • To create a Collection for PERSON (or other type) items, a Repository Manager would create a Collection and then notify TDL that they wish the Collection to be configured for PERSON entities. When configured accordingly, the submission form for items that go into that Collection will include fields appropriate for a PERSON entity. Additionally, the fields in the submission form can be customized to your needs.

There are some limitations to how useful Configurable Entities can be immediately for repositories with existing content.

  • Existing Items from a DSpace 6 repository cannot easily or automatically be converted to “typed” Items at this time. 

  • Generic items (i.e. all the items that currently are archived in your repository) cannot be linked to “typed” items.