We are half-way through May already, which means summer is nearly here. Read on for all the details on what we’ve been doing and where you can expect to find us in the coming weeks and months.  

News 

Membership - Your support is valuable! 

Fedora is an open-source, community-supported program funded entirely by membership contributions. As we move in to membership renewals for FY2022-23, we wanted to thank all of our financial sponsors who continue to actively support this vital piece of software, used by countless institutions across the globe. Your funding supports our staff who work to develop, teach, engage and support all active Fedora users. Without our members, we would not be able to support the preservation of the vital content contained within the repositories of our users. Find out how you can help. Learn more and become a member today! 

Fedora 6.2 –Release Candidate 

On May 16th, we announced the official release of the Fedora 6.4 Release Candidate. Pending any issues, official release is scheduled for May 30, 2022 so mark your calendars! 

This release candidate features just a few of the following: 

  • The addition of a new REST endpoint to retrieve repository statistics including mime type, binaries and resource count. 
  • Rebuild your repository asynchronously 
  • Updates to the HTML UI to add fields, paging, max results etc. to queries 
  • Allow GET-ing binary resources with the Content-Disposition: “inline” instead of “attachment” 

There are several ways you can test this release candidate: 
1) Download the one-click-run [2]  
2) Download the war file to deploy into a servlet container [3]  
3) Run in docker [4]   

Technology Update 

This spring we have continued to focus on bringing more stability to the Fedora core through bug fixes, improvements to Fedora’s API, and the HTML UI. In addition, we have a new tool, fcrepo-doctor which allows users to correct potential errors made in the serialization of binary metadata in versions prior to 6.2.0 of Fedora. Starting with 6.2.0, all binary metadata will be applied to the binary ID, which matches the behavior during migrations. 

We also were able to review more migration pathways and have made updates to the migration-utils tool. These include bug fixes as well as the option for a HEAD only migration, which only uses the latest version of your Fedora 3 objects. While testing against very large datasets we found that the migration process can stress certain filesystems, and we have updated our documentation about what can be done in these situations. 

Fedora Migrations – Community Input 

Back in April, we were fortunate enough to receive some amazing feedback about a migration from Fedora 5 -> 6 that took place at the University of Las Vegas, Nevada. Seth Shaw, Application Developer at UNLV University Libraries, documented the entire process in a blog entry which can be found here: https://seth-shaw-unlv.github.io/2022-04-06/fedora_5-6_migration 

While there were some roadblocks along the way, with the aid of community members on Fedora Slack and the available documentation, the team was able to complete the migration and are now running Fedora 6 along with their Islandora site in production. We want to thank Seth Shaw and the team at UNLV University Libraries for taking the time to document their experience and share it with the community. 

For those considering undertaking a migration, we would encourage you to check out all available documentation or join the #migration channel in the Fedora Slack for additional support from fellow community members and committers. 

Special Thanks 

As you may or may not be aware, this month we said farewell to Peter Winckles as a Fedora committer. He has transitioned away from his role at the University of Wisconsin, Madison to pursue a new position at a local software company. We wanted to take a moment and thank him for his invaluable commitment to Fedora, the software and the community over this time with the program. His work helped get Fedora 6.0 out the door and he has been instrumental in the creation of the migration utilities that have opened pathways to move from all older versions of Fedora to the newest release. 

We want to wish Peter the very best of luck in his new endeavors. Thank you for your time, commitment and dedication and we hope that we will see him around the community in some capacity in the future! 

Where to Find Us 

June – Open Repositories 2022 

Workshop: Welcome to Fedora 6.0 

Presentation: Repository Rodeo (Featuring Jon Dunn from the University of Indiana representing the Fedora Community) 

Poster Session: IMLS Grant Update: Fedora Migration Paths and Tools: A Pilot Project (A collaboration between Fedora, Whitman College and the University of Virginia) 

Where will you be this conference season? We would love to hear where you are planning to be so that we can coordinate and get the opportunity to try and connect face-to-face with our community members. 

See a conference you want to attend and have a collaborative idea you’d like to work with the Fedora team on? Email us at arran.griffith@lyrasis.org. We would love to work together on join presentations to help bring Fedora to more users. 

Demo Videos 

We are happy to be back with our regularly released demo videos. To kick things off, Danny Bernstein, Tech Lead at Fedora, demonstrates how Fedora integrates with S3. 

WATCH THE VIDEO HERE – Fedora S3 Demo 

Other Useful Videos: 

Do you have a suggestion for a video you’d like to see? Email us at arran.griffith@lyrasis.org to let us know. We will be releasing a demo video each month and want to know what you’d like to see! 

What’s Happening in Our Partner Communities 

Samvera 

  • Call for Proposals for workshops (90 mins, 3 hrs or 6 hrs) is now open for Samvera Connect 2022 taking place at the University of Notre Dame from October 24-27, 2022. Submit your workshop proposal here: https://forms.gle/kRtSsmaftKPuyVNf7 

Islandora 

Fedora Registry 

Part of our mission with Fedora 6.0 is to better understand our user install base. As a result, we are reaching out to the community now to help with these efforts. Is your institution in our registry? If so, are all the details up to date? Check out the current Fedora Registry here: https://duraspace.org/fedora/community/fedora-users/ 

Need an update or need to add your instance? Use this link: https://duraspace.org/registry/register-your-site/ 

By understanding our install base and what versions of Fedora are being used, we will be better prepared to provide the support necessary for our entire community. 

Get Involved 

Fedora is designed, built, used, and supported by the community. Join the conversation on our Fedora Slack channel or sign up for our Fedora community mailing list to stay in the loop. You can find more details here. 

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