Client: Australian Catholic University
Sector: Higher education
Country: Australia 🇦🇺
Platform: Cayuse (formerly Haplo) to Atmire Open Repository, powered by DSpace
Australian Catholic University selected Atmire to replace the platform behind ACU Research Bank, the university’s institutional repository. ACU Research Bank collects, preserves and showcases research publications and research data created by Australian Catholic University staff and higher degree by research students. Where copyright and other permissions allow, it also makes a version of the research output openly available.
The repository therefore serves several purposes at once. It preserves the university’s research record, improves the visibility of ACU scholarship and helps researchers share their work with audiences beyond the university.
To continue supporting those goals, ACU needed to replace its existing Cayuse (formerly Haplo) repository with a platform that could offer more direct administrative control and a clearer path for future development.
An Open Repository for ACU
Atmire implemented its Open Repository platform, a managed repository service built on DSpace.
The service specification covered onboarding, theming, repository configuration, migration services and dedicated infrastructure. The planned architecture included production, read-only standby and test environments, together with infrastructure maintenance, persistent Handle URLs, platform upgrades and support.
This managed model allowed ACU to move responsibility for the underlying infrastructure and platform maintenance to Atmire while retaining control over repository content and day-to-day administration.
Migration from Cayuse (Haplo)
The migration covered both descriptive metadata and the files attached to repository records. Mapping the source data to the Open Repository metadata profile also helped ACU move away from unnecessary dependencies on the legacy platform. Rather than reproducing every feature or field exactly as it existed in Haplo, the project established a more maintainable structure in DSpace.
Atmire carried out the imports on the managed hosting infrastructure, allowing the team to test the migrated content in the target environment before public launch.
Optional services for future growth
The project also included several optional bundles that could extend the repository as ACU’s needs developed.
At a high level, these options covered:
- DataCite DOI integration: Configuration to support DOI minting for eligible repository content.
- Single sign-on: Integration with an institutional identity provider to simplify authentication.
- Advanced statistics: Repository reporting and usage monitoring, including controls designed to support privacy-conscious analytics.
ACU was very pleased to select an DSpace Open Repository solution from Atmire as our new replacement institutional repository in 2025. Our project was time constrained, complex in its export of assets, and limited in the staffing resources available to support the work. Atmire were excellent partners and our new DSpace repository was online on time and with a seamless transition for our public research outputs. The ACU Research Bank team are greatly enjoying the flexibility and empowerment for self-driven curation and administration that DSpace is providing us. We continue to work well with Atmire in bringing online submissions and author profile automations to our repository services in 2026. We are looking forward to a more dynamic and interconnected institutional repository into the future.
— Reeson Thomas, Research Data & Infrastructure Librarian, Australian Catholic University
Plan your repository migration
Request an Atmire migration assessment to explore how your institution can move from Haplo or another legacy repository to a managed DSpace platform.