Migrating from Nesstar to Borealis, the Canadian Dataverse Repository

The Canadian ODESI repository (https://www.odesi.ca) aggregates 6,000+ social science datasets including microdata and census data from Statistics Canada, Canadian polling agencies, and other sources. Developed and maintained by Scholars Portal, it is the outcome of ongoing collaboration between members of the Ontario Council of University Libraries (OCUL, https://www.ocul.on.ca). After 15 years providing data access and tools to the Canadian research community, the repository infrastructure is due for an upgrade. In early 2022, the platform's back-end began migrating from Nesstar to Dataverse, a state-of-the art, DDI-compliant repository platform. The current project phase involves migrating five data collections into a testing instance of Borealis, the Canadian Dataverse Repository, and a concurrent redevelopment of the ODESI front-end. This presentation will share and discuss our initial findings, with a primary focus on Dataverse and DDI metadata interoperability issues—alongside other common migration challenges like data/metadata quality, migration workflow management, stakeholder and institutional change management, and sustainability. Our aim is to formulate a migration approach that is community-based, in collaboration and dialogue with the Canadian and international RDM, Dataverse and DDI communities