May 21, 2025 – The Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), Scholaris, and Scholars Portal are pleased to share the first official release of the Scholaris Expert Group Recommendations, a milestone shaped by the dedication, insight, and collaboration of contributors across the network.
The guidelines created by the Scholaris Metadata and Discovery Expert Group (S-MDEG), offer a practical, community-informed approach to metadata in DSpace, aligned with standards:
- S-MDEG Cleaning Metadata for Migration Recommendations
- S-MDEG Minimum Viable Metadata Recommendations
- S-MDEG Multilingual Recommendations
- S-MDEG Entities Guidance and Advice
- S-MDEG Briefing Document on Persistent Identifiers
The guidelines developed by the Scholaris Electronic Theses and Dissertations Expert Group (S-ETEG), support electronic theses and dissertations across institutions:
These recommendations are designed to support local implementations while encouraging greater alignment across institutions. This release marks the beginning of a shared body of work that will continue to grow through additional recommendations and guidance from the expert groups in the coming months. While this work has been anchored within the Scholaris implementation and designed to support participating institutions, many of the outputs also have broader relevance and will, we hope, prove useful to the wider repository community.
Thank you to everyone who lent their expertise, energy, and time. Your contributions are shaping a stronger, more connected repository community.
The French version of the recommendations will be released by mid-June.
For more information about the Scholaris initiative and expert groups, see CARL’s involvement with Scholaris and the Scholaris website.
