DSpace is the software of choice for academic, non-profit, and commercial organizations building open digital repositories.  It is free and easy to install "out of the box" and completely customizable to fit the needs of any organization – Dspace.org

DSpace is a platform that allows you to capture items in any format – in text, video, audio, and data. It distributes it over the web. It indexes your work, so users can search and retrieve your items. It preserves your digital work over the long term.

DSpace does not require a very heavy Infrastructure. All it requires is:

1. DSpace Install – Free
2. TOMCAT – Server
3. PostGre – Database Management Software

DSpace is typically used as an institutional repository. It has three main roles:

1. Facilitate the capture and ingest of materials, including metadata about the materials
2. Facilitate easy access to the materials, both by listing and searching
3. Facilitate the long term preservation of the materials

Unique Features of DSpace are:
1. Authentication: The mechanism whereby systems may securely identify their users.
2. Authorization: The mechanism by which a system determines what level of access a particular authenticated user should have to secure resources controlled by the system.
3. Ease Of Access: The level of effort required in order finding, or gaining access to use it is very minimal by using various Browse options.
4. Faster Search & Retrieval: Users can search for any item via a single interface. An Advanced Search tool is also available.
5. Hierarchy to manage contents (i.e. Communities, Collections, and Items):
6. Import & Export: Allows Import & Export for Communities, Collections and Items.
7. Statistics: Provides statistical reports/summary which can be used for perform analysis on repository.
8. Supports large no. of digital formats: DSpace accepts any type of digital content, including: Text, Images, Audio and Video.
9. Customization: Allows customization to accommodate the multidisciplinary and organizational needs of a large institution.
10. Standards Compliance: By Default, Dspace stores item Meta data in the Dublin Core Metadata Schema. This ensures data can be exchanged with other standards compliant system, such as MARC21. MARC is an acronym for MAchine-Readable Cataloging. The five MARC 21 communication formats, Bibliographic Data, Authority Data, Holdings Data, Classification Data, and Community Information, are widely used standards for the representation and exchange of bibliographic, authority, holdings, classification, and community information datain machine-readable form.
11. Optimized Search: Dspace uses the open source search engine technology 'Lucene' which makes it very easy for anybody to find any item within a very short span of time