This report presents Dspace that is a product realized in 2000 between Libraries of MIT (Massachussetts Institute Technology) and Hewlett-Packard Company relating to building a repository. It is able to support long-term memory, capturing and archiving of scholastic documents, realized from all MIT’s departments and free access by WWW, too.
Furthermore, Dspace supports distribution and self-preservation of a different kinds of materials such as texts, videos, sounds, pictures, software and datasets. Some of them may be objected of electronic copyright and consequently don’t have a free access. However, it is possible decide which users (single people or accademic groups) can use all these different materials.
There are two interfaces for Dspace, both of them have specific aims. The first considers authors, which using self-archiving, are able to produce metadata of their works so that database can grow up.
The second considers the archive that allows managing of many different kinds of format and digital resources.
In fact, on one hand Dspace is useful for all research workers at the MIT and on the other hand in teaching multimedia (such as an e-learning environment, in particular for distance education).