I am pleased to announce that Tim Donohue (of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and I have had a proposal accepted for a half-day tutorial entitled “Making DSpace Your Own” at the 2006 Joint Conference on Digital Libraries.
This was originally intended as a full-day tutorial; we are still deciding how we will cut it down to fit in a half-day. The abstracts we originally created for each half-day follow:
Starting an institutional repository on top of DSpace? Using BioMedCentral’s new OpenRepository service? Get control over its look and feel! Learn to modify DSpace to reflect your institution’s branding, improve usability for both submitters and users, and answer special search needs.
This introductory tutorial assumes no knowledge of DSpace or Java. Basic Unix commands, FTP, and HTML assumed.
Does out-of-the-box DSpace not have all the functionality you need? Is there a cool DSpace patch you want to install, but don’t know how? Do you want to edit the HTML within a JSP, but scared of all the Java code? Get more control over your DSpace installation! Learn how to make your installation unique with customized code or functionality! While you’re at it, learn about the DSpace developer community and how you can give back!
This intermediate tutorial assumes familiarity with DSpace, including basic configuration and customization. Familiarity with basic Unix commands and HTML recommended. This tutorial assumes little or no knowledge of Java, servlets, or JSPs.
Tim Donohue knows DSpace code quite thoroughly, having contributed several patches and enhancements to the software project. Because I am relatively new to DSpace, I am well-placed to help other new implementors avoid common beginners’ traps and manage frequently-desired enhancements.
Please spread the word to other DSpace administrators.
