Assistance with Retroactive Collection Policies in DSpace

[Lucas Silveira]

Dear DSpace community,

I am writing to request your assistance and guidance with a challenge we are facing regarding the application of retroactive collection policies in our DSpace repository.

Currently, we are working with version 7.5 of DSpace and manage a repository with approximately 50,000 deposits. We are seeking to implement new access and restriction policies in our collections to ensure the security and compliance of our repository. However, we have encountered difficulties in applying these policies to old items already deposited in our collections.

While the policies are functioning as expected for new deposits, we have been unable to find an effective way to retroactively apply these policies and consistently enforce them on existing items in our collections. Our attempts thus far have not been successful, and we are facing technical hurdles in this process.

We would like to leverage the expertise and experience of our DSpace community to better understand best practices and possible solutions for addressing this issue. If anyone has faced a similar challenge or has insights on how to approach the application of retroactive collection policies efficiently, we would greatly appreciate if you could share your experiences and knowledge with us.

Additionally, any documentation, guides, or related resources that could assist us in this process would be extremely helpful.

We sincerely appreciate your help and collaboration. We look forward to hearing your suggestions and guidance on this matter.

Warm regards,

Lucas.

[Edmund Balnaves]

Unfortunately, bulk policy management did not make it into DSpace until the 7.6 release.   This function allows you to retrospectively change the policy on all items and /or bitstreams ( a standard feature of DSpace 6).

./dspace/bulk-access-control -h

usage: bulk-access-control
 -e,--eperson <arg>   email of EPerson used to perform actions
 -f,--file <arg>      source json file
 -h,--help            help
 -u,--uuid <arg>      target uuids of communities/collections/items

See - https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSDOC7x/Bulk+Access+Management

We have used scripts to programmatically update policies via SQL but this needs careful crafting.  I recommend upgrading to 7.6. 

 If an upgrade is problematic you could back-port from dspace-api/src/main/java/org/dspace/app/bulkaccesscontrol/.

Edmund