DSpace 7 Benefits : Is It Worth Upgrading?

Abstract

This study discusses the importance of the DSpace open-source software that supports numerous digital libraries and repositories around the world. With the release of DSpace version 7, a natural question that arises is whether the new version offers enough new functionalities to motivate system administrators to upgrade. This paper briefly describes the most important changes, including new features and bug fixes, included in DSpace 7.4 and prior minor versions. The next parts of this paper explore our estimate that there are several thousand DSpace-based systems globally that will likely have to be upgraded in the near future. The main reason for this need is that older versions of DSpace (including 5.x) have reached the end of their developer support period or are reaching it in mid-2023. Based on our own upgrade experience, we propose suggestions and recommendations on migrating from the previous DSpace 6.3-based environment to the new one in a case study that concludes this article.