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Ways To Contribute and Participate

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• Communicate - Use the Mailing Lists, this Wiki and the DSpace IRC Chat Channel to communicate with the community
• Congregate - Attend user groups, conferences, library events, developer meetings - and any other venue where DSpace users meet to share information and ideas. If you are a developer (or just interested in developer discussions), join the weekly DSpace Developer Meetings. If you are a repository manager, you may wish to volunteer for the DSpace Community Advisory Team or attend their meetings / online discussions.
• Test - Download and try out beta releases; provide bug reports, experiences, feedback. Our DSpace Demo Server provides a place to test the latest and greatest version of DSpace. If you find a bug, report it via our Issue Tracker (your Wiki Account also works in the Issue Tracker)
• Develop - Contribute bug fixes, new features, developer cycles. Contributing code is far easier than you might think! See the How to Contribute to DSpace#How To Contribute Code section below and the Code Contribution Guidelines for more details.
• Translate - Translate the DSpace user interface into your language, using the new language pack feature of DSpace 1.3 and subsequent versions. See Internationalization Support (I18nSupport) for more details.
• Prototype - The best way to gain support for an idea is to build and share prototype code. If you'd like to share existing prototypes, see the Code Contribution Guidelines for more details.
• Deploy - Share your experiences in deploying DSpaces in different organizations and situations, at large and small scales
• Support - Become active members on the mailing lists, answer others' queries and help solve their technical problems
• Experiment - Take the system for a spin, try it out with different types of content and scenarios; tell everyone what you find. Again, the DSpace Demo Server provides a place to experiment with the latest and greatest version of DSpace. (If you are running a larger, scalability test experiment on the Demo Server, please let us know by emailing the 'dspace-devel' mailing list
• Donate content and metadata - To test and experiment with DSpace, free test collections unencumbered by restrictive usage rights are needed. Contact us via the mailing lists if you have content to donate for testing.
• Request new features / Share ideas - Is there something that you really need out of DSpace or isn't working right? Request new features/improvements or report bugs via our Issue Tracker (your Wiki Account also works in the Issue Tracker). You can also vote on existing features, or add your own comments/suggestions. Both of these can help developers decide which issues are the most important to the community. See the below section on #How To Contribute Ideas or Suggest New Features for more details.
• Help Improve Documentation - Our DSpace Documentation is now managed directly via a new section of our Wiki: DSpace Documentation. Although normal Wiki users cannot edit that area of the Wiki, you can always add comments for additions/changes/suggestions. If you are interested in contributing more formally, volunteer to help via one of the mailing lists, and we can add you to our Documentation Team and provide you with access rights to edit/improve the Documentation directly.
• Let us know if there's a way we can ease the process of contributing to DSpace
• Don't be shy! Contributions don't have to be 100% polished or perfect; no one will think any the less of you. "Share early, share often" is a well-known open source mantra. The sooner you contribute something, the sooner others can help with the polishing, and you no longer have to maintain the customization against the evolving core DSpace platform, since it will be part of the platform!

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