DSpace is an open source repository software package typically used for creating open access repositories for scholarly and/or published digital content. While some of its features overlap with content management systems and document management systems, the DSpace repository software serves a specific need as a digital archives system, focused on the long-term storage, access and preservation of digital content.

DSpace is a set of cooperating Java web applications and utility programs that maintain an asset store and an associated metadata store. The asset store is maintained on a file system or similar storage system. The metadata, including access and configuration information is stored in a relational database and supports the use of PostgreSQL and Oracle database. The web interface XMLUI (aka Manakin) is based on Apache Cocoon, using XML and XSLT.

Archived material is made available primarily via a web interface, but it is also supported the OAI-PMH v2.0, and the system is capable of exporting METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard) packages. DSpace supports the common interoperability standards used in the Institutional repository domain, such as Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting, SWORD, OpenSearch, and RSS. It is also supported the faceted search and browse functionality using Apache Solr.

The system was developed and successfully implemented at the Library of the University of Arts in April-June 2012.

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