This is the June 2015 edition of the Fedora Newsletter. This newsletter summarizes the most significant activities within the Fedora community over the last month.
Call for Action
Fedora is designed, built, used, and supported by the community. Here are some easy and important ways that you can contribute to the effort:
- A general-purpose Fedora 3 to 4 migration utility [1] has been built. Please download and run it over a copy of your Fedora 3 directories. Then report your results, good or bad, to fedora-community@googlegroups.com .
- Use cases and requirements [2] are being formulated now for the Fedora implementation of Web Access Controls. Please review these and make additions or provide comments on the wiki.
- As always, your development contributions are extremely encouraged. Please add a comment to any of these tickets [3] if you are interested in understanding better what exactly is needed.
Software development
Fedora 3 to 4 Upgration
Since the release of Fedora 4.0 in November of 2014, our top priority has been supporting upgrations (software upgrade + content migration) from Fedora 3 to 4. To this end, four institutions participated in a successful pilot program [4] to plan and implement upgrations under a variety of scenarios. These pilot projects contributed to the development of two migration tools; migration-utils [5] (a FOXML-based utility) and fedora-migrate [6] (a Ruby gem primarily used by Hydra implementations). Both us these utilities are ready for community testing and feedback.
New Features
In late May, Andrew Woods started a mailing list thread [7] on post-4.2.0 Fedora feature development. The top 3 features on the roadmap were:
- WebAccessControl
- Asynchronous Storage
- Transparent filesystem
Community members were asked to voice interest in one or more of these features, and to indicate what resources (e.g. development, use cases, testing/validation) they could put towards development. Based on the responses, all three features are important enough for Fedora stakeholders to commit resources toward, and by late June we had held our first planning call [8] for the WebAccessControl authorization delegate [9]. This feature will be designed, developed, and tested by the Fedora community over the next few weeks.
Islandora/F4 integration update
The Islandora community has been working toward an Islandora/Fedora 4 integration, and the latest update [10] was published on June 24. This new version of Islandora will leverage many of the native Drupal and Fedora 4 capabilities, making heavy use of the Apache Camel framework to tie everything together. The project will need community contributions to move forward, so keep an eye on the Islandora mailing list [11] if you are interested in participating.
Conferences and events
Open Repositories
Open Repositories is a fantastic event for the Fedora community, and this year in Indianapolis was no exception. We kicked off the conference with a Fedora 4 workshop [12] that attracted over 50 people, and Fedora was well-represented, with presentations, panels, posters, and 24x7s throughout the conference [13]. The final day of the conference featured a Fedora Interest Group track, the opening session of which attracted over 100 people and completely filled the room! At the end of the conference the Fedora Leadership Group met to discuss project strategy [14] for the next six months, including a greater focus on Hydra-Islandora interoperability (in other words, we are reviving Hylandora).
Fedora Workshop - Knoxville
Following the JCDL conference in Knoxville, Tennessee, a one-day Fedora 4 workshop [15] was hosted by the University of Tennessee, Knoxville on June 26th. The workshop drew attendees from throughout the region covering topics that included a ground-up introduction to Fedora 4, linked data, the Linked Data Platform, the Portland Common Data Model, Fedora 3 to 4 upgrations, and plenty of hands-on experimentation with Fedora 4 and the externally integrated components: Solr search index and a standalone triplestore.
Upcoming
Islandora Conference
The first Islandora Conference will be held August 3-7 in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island (the birthplace of Islandora). The conference schedule [16] includes presentations, panels, and workshops, along with a hackfest on the final day. PEI is a beautiful place to visit in the summer!
Fedora Camp Registration is Open
The first Fedora Camp will be held November 16-18 at Duke University in North Carolina. This Fedora 4 training event will begin with the basics and build toward more advanced concepts–no prior Fedora 4 experience is required. Participants can expect to come away with a deep dive Fedora 4 learning experience coupled with multiple opportunities for applying hands-on techniques working with experienced trainers and Fedora gurus. A draft curriculum [17], including presentations slides, is available on the wiki.
Attendance will be capped at 40 participants so please register now [18]!
DC Area Fedora User Group Meeting Registration is Open
The DC Area Fedora User Group, which meets twice annually, will hold its next meeting [19] on October 7-8 at the Univesity of Maryland. The meeting will include both user group presentations and a Fedora 4 workshop. Attendance is free but space is limited, so please register [20] if you would like to attend.
References
[1] https://github.com/fcrepo4-labs/migration-utils/releases [2] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/Design+-+WebAccessControl+Authorization+Delegate [3] https://jira.duraspace.org/browse/FCREPO-1474?filter=13121 [4] http://duraspace.org/articles/2606 [5] https://github.com/fcrepo4-labs/migration-utils [6] https://github.com/projecthydra-labs/fedora-migrate [7] https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/fedora-community/9IrRXC2k5ZI [8] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/2015-06-24+-+WebAccessControl+Authorization+Delegate+Planning+Meeting [9] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/Design+-+WebAccessControl+Authorization+Delegate [10] http://islandora.ca/content/fedora-4-project-update-v [11] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/islandora [12] https://www.conftool.com/or2015/index.php?page=browseSessions&form_session=12 [13] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/2015-06+Open+Repositories [14] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/2015-06-12+-+OR2015+Fedora+Leadership+Group+Meeting [15] http://cmh2166.github.io/Fedora4Knox/ [16] http://islandora.ca/camps/conference2015/schedule [17] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/Proposed+Workshop+Training+Modules+and+Structure [18] http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?llr=5iy95gcab&oeidk=a07eb3mm0lc1c10b3ac [19] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/Events/Washington+D.C.+Area+Fedora+User+Group+Meeting%3A+7-8+October+2015 [20] http://goo.gl/forms/T9GUvnadYl
