Building Trust Together: A Consortium Approach to Open Repositories via DSpace and the Texas Digital Library

Abstract

The Texas Digital Library (TDL) is a collaborative consortium of Texas universities that builds capacity among its membership for ensuring equitable access to and preservation of digital content of value to research, instruction, cultural heritage, and institutional memory. TDL hosts DSpace digital repositories for its member institutions, allowing them to provide reliable online access to their scholarly and pedagogic output. TDL supports its members through the TDL Dspace Users Group, an open group for anyone in Texas currently using or interested in DSpace repository software. The User Group benefits members by providing: a forum for discussion and mutual support on issues of concern to DSpace users, a means for the TDL to update members on upgrades, training opportunities, and other DSpace-related work of the TDL staff, and a channel for rebroadcasting any DuraSpace news related to the DSpace software to the Texas DSpace community. The user group benefits by reduced costs through shared IT resources and distributed expertise to better support the creation and management of dspace repositories. In this panel we will discuss the function of the user group, as well as the costs and outcomes associated with a consortium approach to repository management using DSpace.