Subsequently, DSpace offers this format as a choice to individual submitters as they submit content files. Maintaining a set of definitions of the types of compound items that DSpace supports Margret, MIT Libraries' faculty liason within the DSpace operations team, has been working to understand and meet the needs of medical researchers. These researchers generate, on an ongoing basis, interpreted X-ray images that are representative of certain degenerative conditions. They are motivated to make this corpus available online and relate the interpreted X-rays to their published work in the field. Adding a compound content type for interpreted X-rays makes sense for the library, the researchers, and for DSpace.
Libraries are willing to invest the energy to define the characteristics of such holdings.
The benefits gained by the availability of the interpreted X-rays exceed the startup costs of adding support for the content type to the DSpace system. There is some mechanism for funding or recovering the startup costs involved. Margret validates the content type definition and, using an administrative interface, adds it to the DSpace system. The program produces an html page that displays the x-ray with its annotations, and links the annotations to a medical dictionary, hosted at Harvard Medical School, that describes the various conditions. They also send an email to the DSpace administrators describing the interface.