This is the July 2019 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.
Register Your Repository
Is your repository listed in the DuraSpace registry? Help us maintain reliable information on the community of Fedora users around the world by registering your repository today. You can also request an update to an existing entry by selecting your entry and filling out the online form.
Membership
Fedora is funded entirely through the contributions of DuraSpace members that allocate their annual funding to Fedora. This year's membership campaign has a goal of raising $500,000 to fund staff to work on Fedora 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!
Upgrades
We are pleased to announce that Amherst College has upgraded from Bronze ($2,500) to Silver ($5,000) membership in support of Fedora. Amherst College has been a longtime supporter of DuraSpace and Fedora, including engagement on the Fedora Committers team (Bethany Seeger) and the Fedora Leadership Group (Este Pope).
The University of Manitoba has also upgraded their contribution to Fedora from $5,000 to $7,500. The University of Manitoba has been engaged with the Fedora project for many years, most notably through Jared Whiklo's participation as a Fedora committer and a representative on the Fedora Leadership Group.
Designing a Migration Path Grant Update
The Designing a Migration Path grant team concluded a community survey in May which received 111 responses. These responses have been analyzed and compiled in a report, which will also include recommendations. Following the survey, a small focus group was held with selected participants to further discuss the questions and determine which recommendations would have the greatest impact on the community. We plan to finalize the report and publish it over the summer. Keep an eye on this newsletter for monthly updates on our progress.
Community-driven Activity
Fedora 6.0
A high-level roadmap and more detailed development plan for Fedora 6.0 are now available. The main features of this next major release will be support for transparent persistence via the Oxford Common File Layout and a built-in query endpoint. The first two code sprints have been scheduled for September 16-27 and November 4-15. Please sign up for a code sprint to participate in this effort.
Oxford Common File Layout
A 0.3 (Beta) release of the OCFL spec is available for review. You are invited to provide feedback, which will be discussed on future community calls.
The most recent OCFL community call took place on Wednesday, July 10. Notes and audio are available online. This call included updates on current implementations, feedback from the beta, and a discussion on recent GitHub issues.
Please join the ocfl-community mailing list for further updates.
Islandora 8
The Islandora Foundation released Islandora 8 version 1.0.0 last month. This is an important milestone for the Islandora project - built using Drupal 8 and Fedora 5, Islandora 8 faithfully integrates the two as invisibly as possible, giving an experience that is both more Drupal-y and more Fedora-y at the same time. Islandora 8 unlocks all of Drupal's features along with its entire ecosystem of contributed modules, all the while quietly preserving your metadata in a Fedora 5 repository behind the scenes.
If you would like to try Islandora 8 for yourself, there are three options:
- A sandbox of version 1.0.0 is available to play with at future.islandora.ca.
- A virtualbox VM is available for download here.
- You can install a development or production environment with the Ansible playbook, which has a corresponding 1.0.0 release.
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
Fedora Workshop, Staatsarchiv Bern
On August 22, 2019 the State Archives Basel-Stadt and St. Gallen will host a Fedora Workshop for archives in the region. Please register in advance to attend - the workshop is limited to 30 people.
iPRES
iPRES is the premier and longest-running conference series on digital preservation. This year's conference will be held in Amsterdam on September 16-20. The program features a Fedora workshop and a presentation on Fedora 6, which will include support for the OCFL. Please register in advance to attend.
Past Events
Islandora Camp Switzerland
Islandora Camp went to Switzerland for the first time this summer, with a three-day camp hosted by Lib4RI - Library for the Research Institutes within the ETH domain: Eawag, Empa, PSI & WSL, and located at Eawag. You can see the full schedule and a selection of presentations here.
Fedora Camp Atlanta
The latest Fedora Camp was held in Atlanta, GA at Emory University in May. Camp participants got a detailed introduction to Fedora, including hands-on feature walkthroughs and discussions about the next major version of the software. Slides and notes can be found on the event page.
Open Repositories
The annual Open Repositories conference took place June 10-13 in Hamburg, Germany. The program included many Fedora-related workshops, presentations, and panels, and the event was followed by a Fedora User Group meeting. Slides from the Fedora update, Designing a Migration Path update, and Fedora workshop are available online.
