This is the August 2018 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. An easy and important way that you can contribute to the effort is by helping resolve outstanding bugs. If you have an interest in gaining a better understanding of the Fedora code base, or a specific interest in any of these bugs, please add a comment to a ticket and we can work together to move your interest forward.
Membership
Fedora is funded entirely through the contributions of DuraSpace members that allocate their annual funding to Fedora. We have begun our annual membership campaign with a goal of raising $570,000, and so far we have raised $474,667 which is over 80% of our goal! This funding pays for staff to work on the project and provide technical leadership, direct strategic planning, organize community outreach, and coordinate timely software releases. Membership also provides opportunities to participate in project governance and influence the direction of the software. If your institution is not yet a member of DuraSpace in support of Fedora, please join us today!
New Members
We would like to welcome several new DuraSpace members in support of Fedora:
- Library of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic
- RUHR-University Bochum, Germany
- Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium
Thanks to all our new members for their generous contributions to DuraSpace and Fedora! Information on membership levels and benefits can be found on the DuraSpace website.
Fedora and Samvera Camp in Berlin
DuraSpace and Data Curation Experts invite you to attend Fedora and Samvera Camp at the Berlin State Library November 5 – 8, 2018. Training will begin with the basics and build toward more advanced concepts – no prior Fedora or Samvera experience is required. Participants can expect to come away with a deep dive Fedora and Samvera learning experience coupled with multiple opportunities for applying hands-on techniques working with experienced trainers from both communities.
Attendance is limited to the first 30 registrants. DuraSpace Members and Registered Service Providers receive a discounted rate. Register before September 14th to receive a $50 discount.
Software development
Standards
Fedora API Specification
The second Candidate Recommendation of the Fedora API Specification is NOW available for public review.
This release should be considered stable in so far as the only potential revisions will come from the feedback of implementers of the Candidate Recommendation.
Minimum requirements for releasing the 1.0 Recommendation include:
- Specification compliance test suite
- Two or more implementations of the specification
- No unresolved, outstanding critical issues, as defined by the specification editors
Please contact the Fedora Community or Fedora Specification Editors with any general comments. Any comments on details of the specification, itself, should be posted as GitHub issues.
Community-driven Activity
Alignment with API Specification
As part of the completion of the Fedora API specification, the current implementation will need to be brought into alignment with the documented specification. To this end, we are scheduling code sprints to complete the alignment work. There will be two sprints, of two weeks each:
- September 10-21
- October 1-12
This is an extremely important milestone for the Fedora project. If you are interested and available to participate in either or both of these sprints, please add your name to the sprint planning page.
Fedora 5.x Documentation
In tandem with the API alignment sprints, we are reviewing and updating the project documentation for the 5.0.0 release. Creating and maintaining accurate and up-to-date documentation is equally as important as software development, so please contribute to this effort.
Oxford Common File Layout
The most recent OCFL call took place on Friday, July 20. Notes and audio are available online. This call included a review of recent additions/updates to in-draft specification, input on the "Need" statement in the specification, deferral of "holey" OCFL Objects in the initial draft, and detail on the "inventory sidecar" file. The next meeting will be on Friday, August 24 at 11am ET. Please join the ocfl-community mailing list for further updates.
Conferences and events
In an attempt to simplify the task of keeping up with Fedora-related meetings and events, a Fedora calendar is available to the community as HTML and iCal .
If you have not already joined the fedora-project Slack workspace please start by visiting the self-registration form. Come join the conversation!
Upcoming Events
iPRES
The 15th International Conference on Digital Preservation will take place September 24-27 in Boston, MA. iPRES is the premier and longest-running conference series on digital preservation. This year's conference will include a paper on the Oxford Common File Layout presented by Fedora Product Manager, David Wilcox. Please register an advance to attend.
Previous Events
Islandora Camp HRM
Islandora Camp came to Atlantic Canada on July 18 - 20, 2018 in historic Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the campus of Mount Saint Vincent University. The curriculum included updates on Islandora and CLAW, community presentations, and guided content for both administrators and developers. Presentations can be found online.
