Josh, Theres nothing wrong with what you are describing if its all your institution needs, but I would be careful about promoting that as an IR. An IR is much more than a bunch of documents. The metadata modelling, preservation features and indexing that you want to leave out are what makes it a repository. Also, the infrastructure you are describing may lack flexibility in the future if you decide you want to add new features to it. Bryan J. Brown Repository Developer Technology & Digital Scholarship Division Florida State University Libraries ________________________________ From: Code for Libraries <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Josh Welker <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Wednesday, October 25, 2017 2:51:34 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: [CODE4LIB] Lightweight IR infrastructure We're a mid-sized university library (10,000 fte) trying to get an IR off the ground to showcase student and faculty research. We've had a DSpace instance running for several years, but we use so few of its features that DSpace ends up being more trouble than it is worth. In particular, it's very frustrating to deal with metadata editing, file management, the Handle URL system, and HTML/CSS theming. I am considering leaving the DSpace model in favor of our "IR" just being a glorified FTP site that MARC records in our catalog can point to. I might even build a tiny frontend using some scripting language to add IP authentication, URL redirect stuff, or a Google Scholar interface, but that's really it. No metadata modelling, no preservation features, no indexing. Does anyone have experience using a very small, file-based (as opposed to database-driven) application as a foundation for an IR? Are there any problems I should anticipate? Joshua Welker Information Technology Librarian James C. Kirkpatrick Library University of Central Missouri Warrensburg, MO 64093 JCKL 2260 660.543.8022