I'd also be interested in what others have done, since even with DSpace 7.x sites the frontend configuration can only change so much!

We did some work a few years ago to connect Blacklight to the Solr instance on one of our DSpace systems. I'm not a Ruby dev by any means, but it still only took about two weeks to get a basic interface set up with thumbnails and custom facets.

Omeka S also has a DSpace connector that can import metadata from targeted collections. That could be a more approachable option.

Thanks!

-David

David Dean (he/him)
Associate Director - IT
New Jersey State Library
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