The standard open source versions of DSpace, come with a broad range of functionality. This explains why the platform is being adopted for many different purposes. In most cases, DSpace delivers around 80% of the expected functionality, right out of the box. Repository managers are often confronted with enquiries regarding this "remaining 20%" of features the standard DSpace doesn't have, or specific goals it isn't 100% suited for.

@mire is specialized in dealing with such enquiries. Some enquiries require limited modification, such as adding an extra button to the user interface, others are more fundamental and also affect the underlying database. In either case, @mire provides adequate documentation and source code, in order to enable institutions to maintain these modifications.

@mire has extensive experience with following areas of customization:

• Styling
  
  

  If your repository hosts high rated research output, or other digital assets, it's appropriate to ensure professional web presence. Customizing the look and feel of the repository, to your institution's house style, allows the repository to blend in with other institution websites. At the same time, this ensures that visitors, who retrieve information from the repository through search engines like Google, correctly identify the relation between the information, and your institution.

• Integration
  
  
  When your institution decides that the repository will become part of the institution's range of IT systems and services, there are valuable synergies in integrating the repository with those other systems.
  
  An example, when integrating the repository with the institution's staff database, authentication and authorization processes in the repository can be automated and simplified for users and administrators. @mire can handle many authentication or authorization frameworks such as LDAP, Shibboleth, Active Directory.
  
  
  
• Batch Import
  
  
  A time intensive task that @mire optimizes, is importing available data from a broad range of legacy systems. For several bibliographical data formats (MedLine¹, MARC21, MARCXML, RIS, BiBTeX and BibTeXML²), @mire has developed tools & methodologies to import these into the repository.
  
  If you have information in other data formats, @mire can develop custom programs to import these data as well. If the need exists at your organization to let your members validate these imported data, the @mire validation add-on might be of interest (see products).
  
  And even if your institution does not have a legacy system or it's own data set, @mire can import data from various available sources such as PubMed, ISI Web Of Knowledge, ...
  
  Click here for a video that illustrates both Batch Import and Live linking with external databases.
  
  
  
• Live linking with External Databases
  
  
  In many situations, there exist public or commercial sources of information relevant for your repository. For example, in the academic context, PubMed is a service that offers metadata from publications of the medical industry. ISI Web of Knowledge, is a well known commercial source of reliable information about scientific publications. @mire creates interfaces that enable the import of information, thus eliminating the need to input data manually.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Click here for a video that illustrates both Batch Import and Live linking with external databases.
  
  
  
• User interface customization
  
  
  Depending on the needs and profiles of your repository's users, the DSpace interface could have shortcomings in terms of functionality and usability. Especially if new content has to be submitted by people, who aren't affiliated with the library, the standard submission and edit interfaces could be perceived as complicated or too elaborated.
  
  In our experience, if more look-up functionality can be offered, as opposed to manual text entry, users will be able to submit items faster, with less errors. If the repository is integrated with the staff database, lookup functionality can be offered for contributors.
  
  The standard DSpace submission workflow supports different entry forms, per collection. However, you could run into toubles when collections are organized according to an organizational hierarchy, and not according to content types. If your collections contain a variety of content types, @mire can aid with the development of different templates. These templates allow different selections of metadata fields, for the same collection.