We administered a survey to the tenure track faculty of MIT in order to learn about their
perceptions and anticipated use of DSpace. Respondents were roughly representative of
the overall Institute’s department and tenure mix. Our findings served as a means to
validate aspects of the DSpace Service Definition, which is covered in more detail later in
this report.
We developed a cost model to capture the full economic cost of operating DSpace
including staff impact, space, hardware and other Libraries resources, only some of
which will result in differential cash flows. The remaining costs are important to capture
for MIT Libraries’ planning purposes. We gathered data from the Transition Planning
Group staffing model, HP, MIT Libraries’ records and MIT central accounting. Our
model is designed to reflect the costs of operating DSpace; therefore we specifically
ignore system development costs. The costs of implementation within MIT Libraries are
also ignored. Because DSpace is the first of its kind our costs of implementation would
not necessarily be replicated by federating institutions.
We also examined possible funding opportunities to offset the costs of operating the
system. We took into consideration MIT Libraries’ goals to make the system freely
accessible to both submitters and consumers of content. Using the service definition and
cost model as a guide to the potential scope and scale of the system, we sought to
maintain a balance between rapidly advancing the system and minimizing costs.