DSpace Admins: How do you structure your DSpace teams?

[Arta Seyedian]

Hello all,

I'm writing because I am curious how others who set up, administer and maintain structure their DSpace team. Right now, I am a contractor and sole developer of 2 DSpace instances at my institution, and when I was first hired, the idea was that this was a minor side project that would have been completed in a few short months, at most, with all of the configurations and customizations, and a salaried member of the team would take over long-term maintenance. 

It's now 10 months later and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight with the customizations, bugs, upgrade defects, configurations, etc. and no one else else where I work has the now-extensive depth of knowledge about how DSpace works that I have. It has me wondering: obviously other institutions have DSpace administrators, but are they (at least mostly) dedicated, as in, that is their main role? Are there others that help out or are dedicated? Is maintaining, customizing and configuring a DSpace instance (or two) something that other institutions carve out a budget for?

Please let me know, I'm very curious!

Thank you,

Arta

[Mariusz]

Hello Arta,

In my institution, we also maintain two instances of DSpace, but there is no dedicated team for this. I handle the technical aspects, while my two colleagues act as editors approving items added to the repositories. However, this is just one of my responsibilities among many others in my role as an IT specialist at the university library, and for my librarian colleagues from the Scientific Information Department.

Regards,

Mariusz