University of Patras: Enabling Multilingualism and I18N in DSpace

Two years ago University of Patras initiated a large project in order to reform the studies programmes of its departments. Along with departmental efforts a series of central support actions where set up and put on to development. Among these, the establishment of a central inter-departmental Institutional Repository that will facilitate management, preservation and dissemination of educational material has a major role in the effectiveness and success of the project. After a review process and taking in to account parameters like system availability, extent of support and use of state-of-the-art technologies DSpace was selected as the basis for the development of the University of Patras educational repository. This presentation is focusing on the efforts that have been made in order to upgrade DSpace in to a truly internationalized system, instead of its mere localization. Specifically the presentation revolves around the following points: 1) The methodology followed towards making the DSpace UI multilingual, recently incorporated in to DSpace 1.3. 2) internationalization of dynamic content in servlets and tags (like dates, headers and other text). 3) Submission of metadata in more that one language (metadata language description). 4) Language-dependent item view. 5) Dynamic change between interface languages. 6) Lessons learned and suggestions for further progress on DSpace i18