DSpace Help

DSpace captures, distributes and preserves digital research products. Here you can find articles, working papers, preprints, technical reports, conference papers and data sets in various digital formats. Content grows daily as new communities and collections are added to DSpace. The DSpace content is organized around Communities which can correspond to administrative entities such as schools, departments, labs and research centers. Within each community there can be an unlimited number subcommunities and an unlimited number of collections. Each collection may contain an unlimited number of items.

Communities

The DSpace content is organized around Communities which can correspond to administrative entities such as schools, departments, labs and research centers. Within each community there can be an unlimited number subcommunities and an unlimited number of collections. Each collection may contain an unlimited number of items. This organization gives DSpace the flexibility to accommodate differing needs of communities by allowing them to

  • Decide on policies such as:
    • who contributes content
    • whether there will be a review process
    • who will have access
  • Determine workflow - reviewing, editing, metadata
  • Manage collections

Each community has its own entry page displaying information, news and links reflecting the interests of that community, as well as a descriptive list of collections within the community.

Collections

Communities can maintain an unlimited number of collections in DSpace. Collections can be organized around a topic, or by type of information (such as working papers or datasets) or by any other sorting method a community finds useful in organizing its digital items. Collections can have different policies and workflows.


Each DSpace collection has its own entry page displaying information, news and links reflecting the interests of users of that collection.

Browse

Browse allows you to go through a list of items in some specified order:

Browse by Title allows you to move through an alphabetical list of all titles of items in DSpace.

Browse by Author allows you to move through an alphabetical list of all authors of items in DSpace.

Browse by Subject allows you to move through an alphabetical list of subjects assigned to items in DSpace.

Search - Advanced

Advanced Search (including boolean options) is already supported in the DSpace 9 search page. Boolean keywords can be used, and you can also specify to search within specific fields by name. Some examples:

  • Basic searching: Searching test power will return results with both these words in them (this is equivalent to an "AND" boolean search).
  • Boolean searching options
    • Searching test AND power will return results with both these words in them.
    • Searching test OR power will return results with either of these words in them.
    • Searching test NOT power will return results with "test" but not including "power".
  • Phrase searching: Searching "test power" (in quotes) will return results with the exact phrase "test power" in them.
  • Searching within specific fields
    • Searching dc.title:test will only return results where the dc.title includes "test".
    • Searching dc.title:test AND dc.description.abstract:green will only return results where the dc.title field includes "test" and the dc.description.abstractfield returns "green".
    • Searching dc.subject:fin* will only return results where one (or more) dc.subject fields start with "fin" (e.g. finance, financial, finish, etc).
  • Wildcard searching:
    • Searching test pow* will return results including "test" and any word starting with "pow".
    • Searching dc.description.abstract:* will return results that include the "dc.description.abstract" metadata field (with any value in it).
  • Range searching:
    • Searching dc.date.issued:[1999 TO 2003] will return results that have a "dc.date.issued" metadata field that has a date between 1999 and 2003 (inclusive).
    • Searching dc.date.issued:[2010 TO *] will return results that have a "dc.date.issued" metadata field that has a date after (or including) 2010.
  • Special characters:Some characters have special meaning in searches, e.g. colon (:), asterisk (*), question marks, boolean operators, etc. If you need to search for these characters exactly, surround them with double quotes.
    • Searching "test:power" will search for that string exactly (including the colon character). (NOTE: Without the quotes, DSpace would attempt to perform "Searching within specific fields" (see above) as the colon is a special character.)

DSpace supports all Solr search syntax options, as all searches in DSpace are sent directly to Solr. For more examples, see the Solr documentation for the "Specifying Terms for the Standard Query Parser".