UT digital archive in DSpace will be named ADA

Starting on 25 November, the digital archive of the University of Tartu in DSpace will be called ADA. With the new name, the archive will also have a fresh homepage design that aligns with the design of the university’s website.

Until now, the university’s digital archive was named after the software used to manage it. “The renaming has been planned for some time,” said Piret Zettur, Head of the Department of Information Systems at the University of Tartu Library. “Such a comprehensive and esteemed digital collection deserves its own identity; moreover, if we ever need to switch to another software, we would need to move away from the name DSpace anyway,” she explained. Zettur added that most universities have given their repositories a name that reflects the e-resources they contain. “Similarly, ADA stands for academic digital archive,” Zettur said about the name choice.

“The library is launching a new website on 25 November, so it seemed logical to present ADA to the public on that day,” said Jaanika Anderson, Director of the UT Library. “Although only ADA’s homepage will have a new look for now, we intend to improve the archive’s functionality and develop it according to user needs in the future.”

The digital archive is located at ada.ut.ee, though the previous address, dspace.ut.ee, will still remain in use for the time being.

The ADA digital archive of the University of Tartu is managed by the university library. The publicly accessible archive contains bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral theses defended at the University of Tartu since 2004, as well as educational materials, and also includes digitised books, manuscripts, periodicals, and more from the university library. Separate collections consist of modern e-textbooks and textbooks intended for visually impaired students.