CAS IR Grid is an overarching repository infrastructure that connects the institutional repositories (IR)  of  member  institutes  throughout  Chinese  Academy  of  Sciences  (CAS).  It  aims  to  advance scholarship and promote  research  infrastructure  development  within  but  not limited  to the scope of CAS.  The  primary  goals  are  to  first  establish  sustainable  IRs  in  most  institutes  as  a  practical  and strategic means for them to build partnerships withtheir researchers to ensure capture, preservation,

and  the  widest  possible  sharing  of  all  types  of  their  research  outputs  and;  then,  these  IRs  should gradually  grow  to  be  essential  and  embedded  infrastructures  in  research  environment,  upon  which overlay services can build and layer. 

        In  support  of  its  construction  and  helping  achieve  above  goals,  the  software  toolkit  CSpace  is developed based on popular OSS DSpace package [2] and was officially open sourced in October last year. With successive customization and extension by modifying existing, or adding new components or modules, it offers functionalities and services  that are more practical and well fitting for Chinese language settings and responds to constantly expanding local needs and concerns. Moreover, facing the  evolving  context  of  digital  content  in  research environment,  CSpace  allows  for  creating  or tailoring content type aware templates and associated rules in a non-programmable way, to adapt them to different and changing needs of content management. A range of other useful customization options are also available to enable that it to be easily deployed within certain local settings as well.