Meeting Information

Date and Time: March 05, 2025, 16:00-17:00UTC

Meeting link: See calendar invitation

Attendees

• Pascal-Nicolas Becker 
• Andrea Bollini (4Science) 
• Lieven Droogmans 
• Jyrki Ilva 
• Erica Johns 
• Pierre Lasou 
• Agustina Martinez-Garcia 
• Ianthe Sutherland 
• Dirk Verdicchio 

Ex-Officio:

• Tim Donohue 
• Holger Lenz 
• Maureen Walsh 

  Note taker

Apologies

Isabel Bernal 

Agenda

Notes

Discussion of Questions, Comments, Observations

• What is the current governance model for the DSpace-CRIS community? How many of the DSpaceCRIS users (who are not already DSpace members) might be potentially interested in DSpace membership?
  • There is no formal DSpace-CRIS governance; DSpace-CRIS community is represented on DSpace governance through membership / RSPs
  • Need to be careful when talking about DSpace-CRIS community vs. DSpace community - they are not two different communities; no clear distinction between communities
    • No different mailing list for DSpace-CRIS
    • There is a wiki space in the Lyrasis wiki
    • There is a slack channel for DSpace-CRIS 
    • Source code lives is GitHub (under 4Science account); changes are reviewed by senior developers at 4Science (Andrea and Giuseppe, who are also DSpace Committers) and the 4Science dev team
  • There is currently nothing in the DSpace governance bylaws that says we need to have CRIS representation on governance 
    • We need to determine and write that into the merger documentation (Strategic Vision Document) and come up with a structure
  • If we merged, it would be one community, but we can't presuppose a merger
• Many community members are still using old, unsupported versions of DSpace, and even now, the upgrade to DSpace 7/8 appears to be a major challenge. How do we make sure that we don't end up in a similar situation with DSpace 10?
  
  • It would be just adding existing features into the platform, rather than creating a new platform
  • However, if it's customized, it might be a lot more impactful; technical group will need to provide input on this
  • Updating to a merged DSpace would be like upgrading from 7 to 8 or 8 to 9, not like upgrading from 6 to 7 (which was an upgrade to an entirely new platform)
• Would the new version add extra complexity for the maintenance and development of those DSpace installations which don't utilize any of the DSpaceCRIS features?
  
  • Again, this question is more on the technical side
  • No, we would not try to add extra complexity for development and maintenance 
  • CRIS features are not always CRIS-specific anymore (e.g. usage statistics, which are much better in CRIS)
  • Goal on the technical side would be to try and minimize impact of the upgrade, turn things on and off as they need to 
  • Important for technology group: minimize the technical hurdles, difficulty to upgrade, extra complexity, investigate in detail for changes that will come
  • Important to have good documentation; we need to pay attention to background, general ideas
• What would the merger mean for the existing local integrations with other systems? Would these have to be redone? Would there be major changes in the DSpace REST interface?
  
  • Goal is to minimize impact; REST interface won't be impacted at all - CRIS has same REST API with new features just adding new endpoints for those new features; would be like upgrading from 7 to 8, not 6 to 7
  • What merged solution accomplishes should be the same as current solutions, we cannot remove or break certain features
  • One way to present this to anyone who is concerned about upgrading: these are feature requests that come from the community, and rather than reinventing the wheel, we are using what we already have (CRIS) and are adding that to DSpace
  • Communication might be the most important thing in this merger - how we communicate things to the community will be crucial
  • Need to communicate this would not  be an update like from DSpace 6 to 7. DSpace-CRIS is not a different platform
• Suggestion: pass technical questions on to Technology Group

• How far should we go adding new out-of-the-box features (which may or may not be useful for individual community members) vs. actually making the platform more modular, streamlined and easier to manage? The CRIS part would need to be modular for DSpace users who aren’t interested in CRIS functionality

  • CRIS merger is first step in direction of modularization, will force DSpace into this direction
    • Will be able to see a future that's fully modular
  • Need to make sure that the end product is a robust platform
    • Since DSpace 7, Atmire has mainly focused on bug fixing - clients have reported that new features are nice, but some of the base things aren't working, which is a problem
• Is the merger aimed to finalize at version 10.0 or specific parts of it will be left for its minor releases instead? Clarifying this is essential to build trust in the community
  
  • Goal of technical team to analyze this and come to an agreement 
  • Would only get done in a major release, not in a minor release
  • 4Science does not want to create a DSpace CRIS 10 - this would overwhelm the support team
    • If there is no DSpace CRIS 10, institutions that use DSpace CRIS, should upgrade to DSpace 10 (a merged product)
• How will the user community be engaged during the process? Other than using OR as a strategic venue to share merger details with the community additional channels of communication and engagement are desirable to make sure everyone is duly informed
  • Suggestion: When we decide which features of a merged product to turn off/on by default, we should ideally be surveying the community to understand which DSpace-CRIS features are generally useful (and should be turned on by default) and which may be more specific use cases (turned off by default)

 Strategic Vision Document

• Question: How do we come up with a strategy if we haven't decided if we will merge or not?
• One approach: presuppose a merger and begin drafting a strategy vision document. As the document is drafted, we'll be forced to answer major questions & identify roadblocks
• Need to continue this discussion during our next meeting

Action Items

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