When the University of Toledo (UT) earned Carnegie R1 classification in 2025, its institutional repository took on greater strategic importance for preserving, organizing and expanding access to the university’s scholarly and archival record. By using DSpace and Lyrasis DSpaceDirect Hosting, the UT Digital Repository cut administrative overhead, improved discovery through structured collections and enabled batch metadata remediation. Using this platform, the UT Digital Repository preserves scholarly work that might otherwise disappear from discontinued conference sites or publishers, while also maintaining institutional records for research use.
Arjun Sabharwal, UT Professor of Library Administration and Digital Initiatives Librarian, said, "In an era where digital content can vanish as quickly as a defunct conference website, the University of Toledo is leveraging DSpaceDirect to ensure its scholarly legacy remains a permanent fixture."
From Complexity to Streamlined Workflows
The UT Digital Repository had historically navigated several repository platforms previously, including CONTENTdm, OhioLink, Digital Commons and, most recently, Islandora. Islandora required a lot of technical expertise to maintain, which was a challenge for the small staff; it was "hard to manage" and had a structure that didn't respect archival provenance. "[DSpace is] much more functional, and that's where I like [it to be].” A professional, “orderly” migration with the Lyrasis Hosting Team was only the first step; the true value of the new system lies in its ability to empower a small staff to manage large-scale data. By harnessing DSpace’s batch processing, a feature Sabharwal called “amazing,” UT can now remediate legacy metadata across entire communities simultaneously, transforming a once-cumbersome administrative task into a streamlined workflow.
The university transitioned from complex Metadata Object Description Schema, or MODS, to a streamlined Dublin Core environment, an international standard for metadata. This shift simplified a framework that had become difficult to maintain in their previous setup, allowing for faster, more accurate discovery across collections. By prioritizing functional organization over complexity, Sabharwal says the platform has opened new administrative potential: “The admin features are great. I can do a lot of things, even more than what I have so far explored.”
Improving Discovery Through Structure and Cross-Linking
After moving from Islandora’s hierarchical model to DSpace’s flat structure, UT preserved the context and provenance of archival records. But organization matters only if researchers can find the materials. To make that possible, UT cross-links DSpace and ArchivesSpace, also hosted by Lyrasis, so users can move from the finding aid to the digital object without losing context. A multiservice hosting discount for DSpaceDirect and ArchivesSpace helped UT keep costs down while maintaining consistency with the same Lyrasis-led support team.
This integrated strategy, supported by external entry points like Google, ArchiveGrid and AI search engines, ensures researchers can navigate seamlessly between collection descriptions and the records themselves.
The Value of a Trusted Hosting Partner
Lyrasis helped UT migrate to DSpace and supported the repository through the entire process. UT’s migration required planning and stakeholder engagement across the organization, flexibility with the hosted service’s capabilities and continued advocacy for essential needs and strategic goals. Sabharwal emphasized balance when going through migrations: “Be open to working with the capabilities and priorities of the organization, but focus on what’s important to you.”
Through UT Digital Repository’s growth and expansion, Sabharwal has come to depend on the steady support from the Lyrasis hosting team. “The nice thing was that I was able to work with the same team, so the names were familiar… You have personal attention and somebody who knows your issues or can easily research them. That was really impressive,” he said.
For Sabharwal, that stability and support of the Lyrasis hosting team helps the university maintain institutional ownership over its intellectual legacy. He sees this as essential for researchers who want context and truth: “The more control we have over these resources, the better we can say … ‘as long as you come to our sources and not rely on just AI, you can get a lot more, because this is where you find context, important information and the connections to the actual collections.’”
A Repository That Grows With the Mission
As UT plans for the future in an AI-driven discovery environment, Sabharwal sees an opportunity to expand its commitment to preserving authoritative records and ensuring researchers can trust what they find. He hopes that the improvements made "might rekindle some more interest in open access publishing" and expand the university’s R1 research profile. This provides a strategic opportunity for the repository to further the university’s research mission, ensuring that new scholarly outputs are immediately visible and preserved for the long term. According to Sabharwal, “right now we are trying to expand and see which way we can go, but engage students and faculty even more." This integrated approach ensures that institutional knowledge remains accessible for generations through a unified, campus-wide effort.
Learn More
Learn more about Lyrasis DSpaceDirect Hosting, our Lyrasis-supported hosting solution for DSpace.
In addition to offering hosting of open-source software, Lyrasis provides an Organizational Home for mission-aligned community-supported open technologies, including DSpace.
For a deeper dive into the University of Toledo’s migration project for their digital repository, you can read the paper “Curatorial Agency in IR Migrations: A Case Study of the University of Toledo Digital Repository” in the International Journal of Digital Curation.
At the 2024 Southern Miss Institutional Repository Conference, Sabharwal presented on the migration. The recording of that session is available. This year, he presented with his colleague, Gerald Natal, on the significance of the R1 classification in connection with the institutional repository.
About Lyrasis
Lyrasis is a community-supported membership organization whose mission is to support enduring access to the world’s shared academic, scientific and cultural heritage through leadership in open technologies, content services, digital solutions and collaboration with archives, libraries, museums and knowledge communities worldwide.