Hi Kathryn,

Your choice of a solution depends a lot on your requirements. Based on what
you've described here, I'd recommend DSpace. We use it at NYU as our IR, so
we have a fair amount of expertise... but my reasons for recommending it
are the maturity of the software, the market share worldwide, the community
support, and the self-service capability. In addition, depending on your
in-house technical staff or lack thereof, there are hosting providers for
DSpace (http://www.dspace.org/service-providers) who do all the software
maintenance so you can focus on the service.

At NYU, we are also using and looking closely at a Hydra/Fedora solution,
and there are compelling reasons for going in this direction, but this type
of setup requires a significant technical investment.

HTH.

Best,

Carol

On Mon, Mar 21, 2016 at 11:12 AM, Knight, Kathryn E. <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> Hi Ben (and anyone who might be curious),
>
> Our current IR was built 10 years ago in-house using C# and SharePoint,
> and feeds a MySQL database. It's primarily used for documents (technical
> reports and journal articles authored by ORNL scientists), but is also
> sometimes used for images, conference posters, presentations, and so forth.
> From an administrative perspective, it's difficult to work with (querying,
> workflow, etc.). From an end-user perspective, the submission process is
> complex. From a metadata perspective, it's all unstandardized and very
> messy.
>
> So, it's time to re-think the whole thing: we'd like to simplify the
> submission process for our users, simplify things for administrators, and
> the appease the metadata police (me). To what degree this is possible
> remains to be seen...but we're encouraged by the numerous IR solutions
> already available, and are interested in exploring how they might meet our
> needs/how they might help us avoid re-creating some of the difficulties
> we've run into with our current system.  However, none of the library staff
> have any experience with the IR platforms out there, so any kind of inside
> info about working with Islandora, DSpace, hosted solutions, etc. would be
> tremendously helpful. We are lucky in that we have plenty of on-hand
> developers at the Lab, so open-source is definitely an option for us, but
> since the library will ultimately be managing the IR we want to make sure
> that we don't select something that requires an advanced degree in computer
> science to maintain on a day-to-day bas!
>  is.
>
> Thanks so much to those of you who have responded already. This community
> is the best!
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> Ben Companjen
> Sent: Monday, March 21, 2016 10:04 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Institutional repositories
>
> Hi Katie,
>
> Although I am not the best person to give opinions about repository
> software in general, could I ask you to share reasons for considering a
> different IR system?
> What would you like the software to do that your current software doesn't?
> What do your users say about your current IR?
>
> I assume you don't want to spend a lot of time and money to end up with a
> system that is very similar to the current one.
>
> Regards,
>
> Ben
>
>
>
>
> On 21-03-16 14:41, "Code for Libraries on behalf of Knight, Kathryn E." <
> [log in to unmask] on behalf of [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> >Hello all,
> >
> >My institution is working on a massive overhaul of our current
> institutional repository. At this point we're still deciding what to choose
> (DSpace, Invenio, etc.). Since I don't have much experience with IRs and so
> far all I can do in meetings is wave my arms and crow about metadata a
> bunch, I thought I'd appeal to the collective Code4Lib brain for some
> repository input. If you have an IR at your institution, what do you like
> about it? Hate? What about the end users? What is your submission process
> like? Anything you wish it could do that it doesn't? Etc.
> >
> >Please feel free to contact me off list with your thoughts, if you care
> to share-I'll keep all information confidential.
> >
> >Thanks so much,
> >
> >Katie
> >
> >Kathryn Knight
> >Metadata and Cataloging Librarian
> >Oak Ridge National Laboratory Research Library
>



-- 
Carol Kassel
Senior Manager, Digital Library Infrastructure
NYU Digital Library Technology Services
[log in to unmask]
(212) 992-9246
dlib.nyu.edu