Question about how embargo start dates are converted from date picker entries in D7

[Julia Gilmore]

Hello all! 

I apologize for this fairly basic question (and especially if it has been answered here before) but if I want an Item to become publicly available on August 8, do I actually need to select August 9 from the date picker in the Start Date section of the Edit Resource Policy page and the 'Grant access from' section in the Bulk Access Management tool in order for DSpace to 'convert' that date to August 8th (one day earlier) on the Authorizations page and apply READ: Anonymous on the 8th? 

I'm putting together some student training materials and the way the embargo 'start' date is described is somewhat confusing: https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSDOC7x/Embargo#Embargo-DSpaceEmbargoFunctionality

Thanks as always for any guidance or confirmation :) 

Julia

[DSpace Technical Support]

Hi Julia,

In DSpace, an embargo is a "start date" for an access policy.  So, essentially, it should be the date that you want the policy to first take effect.

So, if you wanted to embargo an Item until August 8 (i.e. the policy should start on that date), then you should just set August 8 in the "Bulk Access Management" tool.

One thing to keep in mind though is that DSpace stores all dates as UTC internally (in the database).  So, selecting August 8 really means the policy will start on August 8 UTC Time (which is different from your local timezone).

Based on your question about setting the date one day *later*, it is also possible you are seeing this buggy behavior: https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/issues/10119   I believe that is now fixed, but it wasn't fixed until 9.0 (because it required switching to different date libraries, which was a massive codebase change)

Tim

[Julia Gilmore]

Hi Tim, 

Thanks so much for this! I've attached a screenshare showing what we see on our end - when we select the Start Date from the date picker, that date shows up for a split second on the Authorizations page, before it changes to one day earlier. 

I just did another quick test - assigning an item-level restriction and selecting tomorrow's date (2025-07-19) from the date picker (i.e., I would like the item to be READ:Anonymous tomorrow). On the Authorizations page, it displays Start Date: 2025-07-18, but when I go to the Item URL in incognito mode, it is indeed still restricted today - thus, it honours what was selected from the date picker. I believe this is the bug behaviour mentioned in the ticket you linked. 

With this information, I think I can continue recommending to select the 'item becomes public on...' date from the date picker, with a note that DSpace may show it as one day earlier on the Authorizations page due to the known bug. 

Of course, let me know if I have misinterpreted anything here. 

Thanks so much! We appreciate your timely guidance and continued support :)

Julia