Wicked? Or Popular?: It's Time to Try Configuring Entities

With the release of DSpace version 7 in 2021 came a new, optional feature: configurable entities. Entities are particular types of DSpace items that can have relationships with each other. Their purpose is to better support digital objects in DSpace that are relevant to research publications but not the publications themselves, such as author profile pages and data sets. Configurable entities help DSpace better align with the Confederation of Open Access Repositories' technical vision for Next Generation Repositories. In this presentation, I will share a case study of the Iowa State University Digital Repository team's experiences with configurable entities. I will provide examples of the different entity types we use, explore the relationships we assign between them, and discuss benefits and challenges we have encountered in using configurable entities. This presentation will be of interest to repository managers who would like to learn more about options for using entities in DSpace 7. In particular, DSpace repository managers who have not yet implemented entities but are considering doing so would benefit most from this presentation.