I can see the value that both Drupal and DSpace bring to digital collections. Each has its own drawbacks too. The purpose of a project would determine which one is better suited to that collection. Drupal, for lack of a better word, is more casual. Yes, the administrator can create strict permissions for which users are allowed to post, edit, and delete in each sub-collection. But monitoring posts comes after they have been published to the site whereas DSpace has the ability to configure a structured review of posts before they are made. It is akin to having an editor go over the work before it is posted. This is just one example of how the purposes for which each of these applications were developed differ from one another. Drupal's ability to add thumbnails makes the collections and communities more blog-like. DSpace's workflows, Google interoperability function, and Dublin Core metadata standards which all work "out of the box" remind me more of an online database such EBSCO where context is sacrificed for control.
Since my collection is more like a sample of course documents a French teacher might post for a class and expect students to use as a one-stop place for that course, I can sacrifice the bit-level checksums, file format conversions, workflows, metadata control, and Google scholar "push" cataloging that come with DSpace. Instead, I am gaining a more visually appealing, community tagging, user commenting, and modular application that may take more effort to configure, but ultimately suits my purpose better in this instance.
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