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This paper provides a detailed examination of the challenges, gaps, and problems that institutions may face in moving to the DSpace 7 platform from previous versions or from different and various platforms such as EPrints, Invenio, etc., and the implementation solutions already successfully rolled out in such instances. Through the use of live examples, the presentation aims to illustrate the complexities and nuances of migrating repositories to DSpace 7. 4Science has developed standard procedures that identify pitfalls and decision points and related best practices that will be shared with the audience to help define a better and more informed planning of this often critical phase. The transition and evolution to DSpace 7 represents a great opportunity to rethink the repository structure and provide new services to users. Even for institutions coming from previous versions, this evolution is much more than an upgrade; it is essentially a transition to a new platform. From this point of view, the challenges and opportunities go beyond the technical ones. By sharing the experience gained from dozens of migrations to DSpace 7, we hope to help other institutions facing this challenge to make the process as smooth and successful as possible.

In a Digital Library environment, we can define Digital cultural landscapes as "virtual ecosystems" in which digital cultural heritage subsets are related with entities such as people, places, events, fonds, etc., according to different visions and interpretations, in a pluralism generating new knowledge and opening up new perspectives. These virtual ecosystems today can be easily structured by cultural institutions, using a popular application such as DSpace, the world's most widely used open source Digital Asset Management System. Extending the DSpace data model by means of the Configurable Entities and enriching the platform with new features, indeed, it is possible to go beyond the traditional boundaries of the Digital libraries, structuring a complex system of relationships between entities, to be explored through networks and structured paths, building new narratives thanks to interdisciplinarity and the coexistence of different domains. The paper aims at illustrating, through sharing experiences and reflections from numerous Digital Library projects managed with DSpace, how this application can contribute to the modeling of new digital cultural landscapes.

DSpace-CRIS is the first open source CRIS/RIMS platform in the world. It was born with the idea to put the repository at the core of the information ecosystem of Universities and with the ambition to bring utmost prestige and value to adopting institutions. Other approaches, usually promoted by communities less supportive to the open world, CRIS systems put the Repository to a side, subtracting resources, duplicating efforts and creating competing projects. Since its first release as open source, the Open Repository conference has represented a pivotal date in the year to look at the new achievements and future direction of the DSpace-CRIS project and its large user base of hundreds of installations around the world: this year,the DSpace-CRIS new developments since OR2022 and the updated project roadmap will be presented highlighting the relation with the parent DSpace project and the possible convergences.