...
Fedora Commons - Thorny Staples
Thorny explained that Fedora Commons now sees itself as a company with a series of products, amongst which: Fedora itself, Akubra, Mulgara, Topaz... They are looking to provide a range of complementary solutions so that users can build and maintain 'durable' objects.
Fedora is setting up 'Solution Communities' around a range of uses: Data Curation, Preservation and Archiving, Open Access Publishing, Integration Services and, most recently, a Scholars' Repository. A small archives solution community has been proposed by the Jewish Women's Association: there is also some talk of whether a solution community for educational materials might be useful or whether this fits in with the scholar's repository community.
A Duraspace pilot will potentially be live in July 2009. Duraspace is a collaboration between Fedora Commons and DSpace possibly to broker 'cloud infrastructure' in a way that ensures durability and which leverages the Akubra storage module.
In discussion some issues were raised on the ability to feed into Fedora community and the process involved (or lack of): would a 'process community' help with this? There also needs to be a way of engaging 'real' users, rather than technically aware users. Do the solution communities need an analyst role alongside the others? Thorny emphasised that the 'solutions' are not necessarily system-based, but are likely to be broader than this._this section not yet complete _
Member updates 2
British Cartoon Archive - David Evans
...
The Group has an invitation to the Digital Humanities Observatory in Dublin. Dates A date will be circulated ASAPin due course, but the group seemed to favour a June meeting..