Apparently it’s not possible to Creative-Commons-license a DSpace submission via the UI after the ingest process is complete. This is brain-dead stupid, but so much is.
There appears to be a technical way around this, though it is somewhat cumbersome. Use it with all due care; I refuse to be responsible if you CC-license something you shouldn’t and an angry faculty member comes after you with long knives. Also, I’m in the middle of testing this myself; I’m not 100% sure it works yet.
The way CC licensing works in DSpace is that various files (”license_rdf”, “license_text”, and “license_url”) get added to an item in a CC-LICENSE bundle when a depositor clicks the appropriate buttons to add a CC license. So if you add those files to that bundle for an existing item, as far as I can tell, it’s CC-licensed.
If you’re going to try this hazardous little trick (did I mention it was hazardous?), the first thing you need to do is collect those three files for the various available CC licenses. There is probably an easy way to do this, but the hard way is to hop onto your test server (you do have a test server, right?) and put in a few faux items with CC licenses, then use the command-line ItemExport tool to export them. The license files will be in the exported directory.
Now use the ItemExport tool to export the item you want to license. Add the three files pertaining to the appropriate license to the exported item directory. Then add these three lines to its “contents” file:
license_rdf bundle:CC-LICENSE license_text bundle:CC-LICENSE license_url bundle:CC-LICENSE
Make sure that the separator between filename and bundle is a tab character.
Stick the new improved item directory back on your server (if it’s not already there), and (this is important!) run ds_migrate on it, because if you don’t you’ll have even more junky useless format and date metadata than DSpace usually keeps. Then use the regular item importer on it, remembering to add the –replace flag.
Should do the trick. I hope. We’ll see.
Edited to add: Works as advertised. I have a whole CC-licensed collection now!
