Digital Cultural Heritage management has evolved from passive content consumption to a demand for sophisticated analysis, exploration tools, and narratives. This paper introduces Historica, the digital library of the University of Bologna. Historica is built on top of DSpace GLAM, the Digital Library Management System based on DSpace, developed by 4Science. DSpace-GLAM implements a complex data model aimed towards a deep interrelation among digital objects and contextual information. While traditional digital libraries often manage digital objects as isolated files, Historica leverages DSpace-GLAM to structure relationships among digital objects and entities such as persons, places, events, etc. This architecture supports advanced features, enabling users to explore complex historical scenarios rather than isolated items, and to visualise digital objects through timelines and maps. Moreover, the platform integrates IIIF based services for high quality image analysis, delivery, annotation and storytelling and aligns with national and international standards for interoperability and preservation. The paper illustrates the dialogue between DSpace-GLAM and the needs of this academic digital library to support research, teaching, and public engagement. By combining digital library services with tools for analysis and exploration, Historica became a laboratory for new forms of historical inquiry and narrative, turning digital collections into navigable cultural landscapes.

Open repositories are critical infrastructures for sustaining open knowledge exchange, advancing FAIR principles, and enabling long-term preservation. At the same time, they increasingly operate under pressure from ethical obligations, community authority, and emerging technologies such as automation and AI-driven reuse. These pressures raise a central question for repositories today: what does it mean to be “open to all” in practice?

This paper examines how repository workflows, infrastructure choices, and staff practices operationalise FAIR principles while negotiating the limits of openness when stewarding sensitive cultural and linguistic heritage data. Drawing on two contrasting case studies from the University of Cape Town Libraries in South Africa, it demonstrates how openness is produced through socio-technical decision-making rather than assumed as a default.

By comparing these repositories, the paper highlights how platform affordances, governance models, and staff expertise mediate FAIRness, machine reuse, and ethical stewardship. It argues that integrating CARE principles alongside FAIR is essential for building repositories that are sustainable, accountable, and genuinely open in an AI-intensive research landscape.