DRS User Guide

The Digital Repository Service (DRS) is a secure repository system designed to store and share the scholarly work from Northeastern University’s colleges, departments, faculty, and staff. The DRS was developed by Northeastern University Libraries as a tool for University faculty and staff to protect the valuable information and data that has been created as part of the University’s research and instructional mission. It provides long-term security for the files it stores, as well as access management controls and support for various metadata standards (including MODS, Dublin Core, TEI, and LOM) to help ensure that data is as accessible and usable in the present and the future.

The DRS also provides mechanisms through which repository data can be used in other venues, such as departmental portals, digital research projects, and online publications. Users can upload files, make them public, and share them with anyone, or restrict access to only a certain set of users. The DRS is also a discovery platform; anyone can search, browse, view, and download content that is made public. Because the DRS is built using Fedora, an open source repository system with a user-friendly API, objects stored in the DRS can be accessed and displayed using customized web-publishing tools, like Omeka, Drupal, or WordPress.

For Expert Users

Groups and Grouper (Future development)

Grouper is a tool supported by ITS that defines and manages groups of people in the Northeastern community, and all University staff and faculty have access to this group management tool. Once a group is created in Grouper it can be used in the DRS to set viewing and metadata editing privileges for collections and for files. The advantage to using Grouper to define your group is that it only needs to be managed in one place, Grouper, and as an administrator of your group, you, not DRS staff, have control over who can access your, or your community’s, files or collections.

To start curating groups in Grouper, visit https://neuidmsso.neu.edu/grouper/ and sign in with your MyNEU credentials.

Managing Groups

Grouper is an ITS supported tool. For more detailed information about using Grouper, or for help with issues, please visit the Grouper Help page (https://neuidmsso.neu.edu/grouper/help.do) or contact ITS.

Help and Other Resources

Documentation

Other helpful documents, like the DRS FAQ, can be found on the Digital Scholarship Group's DRS page: http://dsg.neu.edu/resources/drs/

Contact

Please contact DRS staff (Library-Repository-Team[at]neu.edu) for for help with the DRS.