2024-05-15 DSpace Leadership Group Meeting

Date

15 May 2024 11:00-1:00 Eastern Daylight Savings Time

Zoom:  https://lyrasis.zoom.us/j/9963190968

Leadership Group Members

• Laurie Gemmill Arp Lyrasis*
• Tal Ayalon World Bank Group
• Pascal-Nicolas Becker The Library Code*
• Isabel Bernal Spanish National Research Council CSIC
  
• Bill Branan John Hopkins University
• Kimberly Chapman University of Arizona Libraries (Ex-officio, DCAT Chair)
• Lieven Droogmans Atmire*
• Scott Hanrath  University of Kansas*
• Barbara Hirschmann ETH Zurich
• Jyrki Ilva National Library of Finland
• Erica Johns Vice Chair, Cornell University*
  
• Joanna Lee George Mason University  
  
• Agustina Martinez-Garcia University of Cambridge* 
• Erik Moore University of Minnesota*
  
• Susanna Mornati (4Science) 4Science*
• Jere Odell  IUPUI
• Alan Orth  International Livestock Research Institute, Kenya**
• Susan Wells Parham Georgia Institute of Technology
• Kristi Park Texas Digital Library*
• Beate Rajski DSpace-Konsortium Deutschland
• Ianthe Sutherland University of Edinburgh
• Maureen Walsh Chair, The Ohio State University Libraries*

Lyrasis attendees

• Tim Donohue 
• Holger Lenz 

The  represents who will be taking notes for a given meeting. It rotates after each meeting to the next person in the attendee list.

*Members of DSpace Steering Group

**Community At Large Representative

***Ex-officio member nominated by the Leadership Group as representative of the community at large. Ex-officio members do not have voting rights

Agenda

Notes

 Welcome

Welcome, Holger!

Note-taker: Erik

Fundraising

Targeted funding accessibility ask with the Development Fund https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSPACE/Announcement%3A+DSpace+Development+Fund

• Total to date: $ 30,000 US
• Texas Digital Libraries $ 5,000
• UMass Chan Medical School $ 2,500
• Lyrasis $ 5,000
• MIT $ 7,500
• Harvard $ 10,000
• Audits received to date:
• Cornell University
• University of Edinburgh
• Community communication went out asking for fiscal year-end contributions, outlining the accessibility funding status, spending strategy, submitting tickets, audit requests
• Accessibility issues can be reported as tickets to be addressed in future releases. If institutions perform accessibility scans, they are welcome to share those results with Tim. But, to ensure issues are resolved more rapidly, we recommend creating tickets.
• Additional funds may be applied to a VPAT or an audit. 

Priority for the next FY's focus for the Development Fund?

What's next for DSpace? Could priorities for 9.0 be (partially) funded via the Development Fund?

• We will start discussions for priorities for DSpace going forward in the next Leadership meeting.

Financials

Quarterly Financial Report

• Fiscal year starts in July1 through June 30. This quarterly report is for the third quarter of the fiscal year. 
• Retained net assets are funds we've saved from previous fiscal years.
• Current net assets are revenues that are currently being spent during the fiscal year and will fluctuate depending on expenses to date. Any remaining funds at the end of the fiscal year will go to the retained net assets. 
• For this report, revenue is ahead of expectations at this point in the year. 
• Expenses are less than expected for year-to-date so the indirect cost rate (IDC) is also lower than expected.
• More information about SCOSS is available, if interested. We are entering the third year of the three-year campaign. The SCOSS funds can continue to be used after the end of the campaign. 

Budget

• DSpace Proposed FY24-25 budget sent via email for discussion and Leadership approval
• Proposed budget approved by Steering May 7th 
• Proposal creates a reserve fund. 
• Use of reserve fund is not yet defined. Steering and leadership would approve use of the funds. 
• Would be helpful to designate as either a rainy day fund or if it is a project development fund.
• If there is a remainder in the year's budget, does it automatically go into a reserve fund or retained as net assets. Would need to determine and designate how to apply the funds. 
• Memberships are a variable in the budget revenue. A Reserve fund would help to counter declines in memberships or other revenue. 
• Some programs use a dollar amount, others use a percentage of their budget. 
• Line item for paid development
• Due to some members not in attendance, the proposed budget will be a vote via email. 

DSpace Development 

DSpace 8.0 https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSPACE/DSpace+Release+8.0+Status 

• DSpace 8 testathon was completed last month. It found lots of bugs that are currently being patched. More than expected. More testers to verify bug fixes are always needed. 
• June 3 tentative release date. 
• Draft release notes for DSpace 8: https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSDOC8x/Release+Notes#ReleaseNotes-NewUserFeatures
• Breaking changes in release notes are issues to consider before upgrading from 7 to 8. https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSDOC8x/Release+Notes#ReleaseNotes-BreakingChanges 

DSpace 7.6.2

• Will include all bug fixes backported from 8 to 7. Estimated release is approximately a month after the release of 8.0

Follow-up on DSpace governance

Open follow-up discussion on the state of repositories and the role of DSpace and DSpace governance.

Notes from last meeting: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lzgtqQ9UEeip0B_jvQHkN8Ka2oZvj7ie5GwZ-9SEv5I/edit#heading=h.p85a24atpbik 

Topics suggested by Leadership members:

• Cyber security
• Compliance - federal/funder mandates (e.g. open access)
• Impact tracking - Reporting on repositories
• Discoverability of repositories
• Catch up with developments in the Scholarly ecosystem - diamond OA, COAR notify
• Increased harvesting/indexing/bots affecting performance and statistics
• Large Language Models (LLMs) training for AI purposes
• Big performance issues at the infrastructure end. It is not a DSpace software issue
• Good bots changing behaviours in terms crawl rates
• Impact of AI Bots
• Concerns around bots / harvesters not respecting content licensing, CORE was mentioned
• Expanded uses of repositories, beyond traditional uses such as collection management
• Increased costs of supporting the repository infrastructure
• Equity of access
• Taking advantage of AI technologies
• AI and accessibility: improving our content in terms of accessibility
• AI tools: automated metadata translation
• Enhancing DSpace support for handling large content. Many DSpace repositories are increasingly taking research datasets.

Additional topics suggested:

• How does DSpace compare to other repository products on the market?
• Is research data a direction DSpace should move toward? 
• Have the core use cases changed? 
• What are the core use cases? These help to drive our software development. 
• Last look at use cases was several years ago. Possibility to revisit. 
• In Europe, merger of CRIS and repositories has become a core use. 
• DSpace is promoted as a turn-key repository system. DSpace 7 is more difficult to implement and may require more resources, including service provider support. 
• Performance is a real issue. How to speed it up so people can get into it easier? 
• Need for training and documentation to help ease customizations. Some documentation is missing or outdated. Who is able and has the time to donate to documentation. 
• Need for simpler documentation for user side. DCAT has provided some user facing documentation. If institutions are creating their own documentation, please consider adding to DCAT https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSDOC7x/Learning+DSpace 
• Plan to develop DSpace as a preservation system. What is the status?
• Strong interest, but slow going. Staffing is not in place. May need to add a consultant. Feedback from community is needed. 

Holger can assist with setting priorities including leading a Q&A after next release. 

Governance

DSpace Governance Working Group Updates 

https://wiki.lyrasis.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=325255570

• Currently reviewing the MOU with Lyrasis. Review of the MOU was timed for May 2024. The Working Group is reviewing.  May. Looking for proposed revisions or adjustments based on experiences the last three years. 
• Working Group is considering pain points and challenges in leadership
• Including elections and balloting issues
• Transition times for officers
• Communications and reporting responsibilities between leadership and steering
• Documentation of leadership roles and responsibilities
• Preparation for new bylaws and code of conduct

Breakout rooms hosted by DSpace Governance Working Group members

• Breakout listening sessions on pain points and sub-optimal processes in the operations of DSpace Governance facilitated by members of the DSpace Governance WG

Debrief

• Onboarding process for leadership needs to be better on how governance is working. Also needs to be clearer to border membership in future bylaws.
• Additional orientation meetings for leadership outside of the quarterly meetings and the orientation for new members could be useful.
• Need for transparency and clarity for elections at different membership levels.
• Wide ranging community – need participation from orgs/people who are not capital M members
• Each fall we lose time with the chair transition
• Orientation on how governance works
• Debrief with leadership members on how they felt they contributed
• Frequency of leadership meetings may result in members not feeling included, especially if they miss a meeting. 
• Difficult to find and fill leadership roles for leadership and steering groups
• Town halls and advisory meetings could help drive new leadership
• Leadership shifted to quarterly to give time for subcommittee groups; has not worked in practice. Idea to shift to every other month. 

Community

• DCAT update - will be sent out via email

Upcoming Events

• DSpace and Open Repositories https://wiki.lyrasis.org/display/DSPACE/DSpace+at+OR2024 

• 2024 DSpace North American User Group Meeting
• CFP due May 24, 2024

• TDL DSpace Users Group Meeting at Texas Conference on Digital Libraries
• Swiss DSpace Users June 28
• Library Code monthly Q&A meetings
• DSpace 8 Q&A webinar possibly in July

Lyrasis

Lyrasis Board Meeting update

• Conversations focused on DSpace
• Familiar themes around documentation, training, support, and available expertise
• Review of submitted code
• Emphasis that DSpace is community driven, even by those who do not financially contribute
• Future recommendations may be put to Lyrasis board

Leadership

• Upcoming - future agenda topics, please send to Maureen

Other Business

• None reported

Decisions

Outcomes

Action Items

• Type your task here, using "@" to assign to a user and "//" to select a due date
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