Happy New Year! This is the November 2015 January 2016 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 is an easy and important way that you can contribute to the effort:

• Add a comment to any of these tickets [1] if you are interested in inching into Fedora development.

Software development

Community-driven Features

Web Access Control

...

Membership

Fedora is designed, developed, and supported by a global community of stakeholders. Organizations that use and benefit from Fedora join DuraSpace as members [2] and direct their membership funding to Fedora. In 2015, the Fedora Leadership Group [3] set a goal of achieving $560,000 in membership funding, and we are happy to report that we have met that goal with just over $563,000 in funding from 76 member institutions [4]! Thank you to all of our members - your continued support helps fund two full-time staff members, the Product Manager and the Technical Lead, as well as training and outreach, hackfests and community meetings, and other initiatives as decided by the Fedora Leadership Group.

Software development

Community-driven Features

API Extension Architecture 

API Extension stakeholders have held numerous meetings over the last few months, and have collected 30 developed a list of high-level requirements [5] based on the use cases [6] related to the API Extension Architecture. The group has agreed on a methodology for evaluating use cases, and has begun to review them in order to distill a set of requirements.that have been submitted and reviewed. An initial proof of concept will be generated, with development sprints anticipated to start in late January or early February. 

If you are interested in the API Extension Architecture, please join the discussion on the fedora-community mailing list [7] and attend the next meeting (TBD [8]).

...

Stakeholders from several institutions held a meeting [9] to discuss implementing support for asynchronous storage media (e.g. Amazon Glacier, Hierarchical Storage Management systems). The initial actions from the meeting include reviewing and liking/commenting on existing use cases [10] and developing a template for further use case contributions. 

If you are interested in support for asynchronous storage media, please review the use cases and plan to attend the next meeting (TBD).

Performance and Scalability

Improved performance and scalability is one of the primary goals [118] of Fedora 4 development, and a number of tests [12] have already been performed. However, as software development proceeds, it is necessary to continuously test performance and scalability to establish benchmarks and validate use cases. To this end, a group of stakeholders has gathered to review and validate past test results, document additional use cases, and establish new benchmarks [13]. 9]. The group has achieved consensus on the test plans [10], and a team has been assembled to implement an initial JMeter Test.

The stakeholders last met on October 26December 21 [14] and November 9 [1511]. If you are interested in participating, please attend the next meeting (TBD [16]).

Community Initiatives

Hydra/Islandora Interoperability

Interoperability between Hydra and Islandora (in the context of Fedora 4) is a high priority for community members across the three projects. The Portland Common Data Model is driving this interoperability at the data modelling level, and most recently, a day-long event was held at Islandora Camp Connecticut to discuss how to develop common services. Examples included derivative generation (e.g. image thumbnails, video access copies), OCR text extraction, technical metadata extraction, and batch importing. More information is available on the Islandora website [17]12] on January 11.

Conferences and events

Past Events

...

Mid-Atlantic Fedora Users Group Meeting

...

The DC Area Fedora User Group, which meets twice annually, held its Fall meeting [18] on October 7-8 at the University of Maryland. The meeting included both user group presentations and a Fedora 4 workshop. Presentation and workshop slides can be found on the wiki [19].

eResearch Australasia

David Wilcox traveled to Brisbane, Queensland, Australia to attend the annual eResearch Australasia conference on October 19-23. Highlights included the first meeting of the new Australasian Fedora Users Group [20], a presentation on supporting research data with Fedora 4 [21], and a day-long Fedora 4 workshop [22] co-presented with Arif Shaon from the University of New South Wales.

Islandora Camp Connecticut

On October 20-23, Islandora Camp went to Hartford, Connecticut, where 36 Islandorians came together to share what they are doing with Islandora and learn more about the project. The event included discussions on adopting LDP and PCDM in Islandora, along with a day devoted to Islandora and Hydra interoperability. Notes and presentation slides are available on the Islandora website [23].

Mid-West Fedora Users Group Meeting

The first Mid-West Fedora Users Group meeting was held on October 22-23 in Chicago, IL at the Art Institute of Chicago. Fourteen regional Fedora users attended, presented project updates, and engaged in discussions on new Fedora developments. Andrew Woods delivered a Fedora 4 workshop on the second day of the meeting. Presentation and workshop slides are available on the wiki [24].

DLF Forum

Members of the Fedora Leadership Group, along with the Product Manager, attended the annual DLF Forum in Vancouver, BC, on October 26-28. David Wilcox delivered a well-received Fedora 4 workshop [25] to 35 conference attendees, as well as a more general Fedora 4 Update [26] to a larger crowd during the event.

iPRES

Andrew Woods, the Fedora Technical Lead, delivered a one-day Fedora 4 workshop at iPRES [27] on November 2 in Chapel Hill, NC. The workshop was sold-out with 40 attendees, confirming the continued interest in Fedora 4 workshops from community members around the world.

Upcoming Events

Fedora Camp

The first Fedora Camp, a three-day, intensive Fedora 4 training workshop, will be held on November 16-18 at Duke University in Durham, NC. Training 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. An agenda, along with details on the event, can be found on the wiki [28]. More Fedora Camps are planned for 2016 and beyond so stay tuned for announcements!

Mid-Atlantic Fedora Users Group Meeting

The first meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Fedora Users Group will take place November 30 - December 1 at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia, PA. The meeting will feature presentations and project updates from regional Fedora users, along with Fedora 4 workshop materials delivered by David Wilcox. More information, along with an agenda, can be found on the meeting website [29].

References

first meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Fedora Users Group [13] took place on November 30 - December 1 at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia, PA. The meeting featured presentations and project updates from regional Fedora users, along with a Fedora 4 workshop delivered by David Wilcox. Presentation slides and workshop materials can be found on the meeting website [14].

Fedora Camp

Fedora enthusiasts from around the US and Canada got together to teach, learn and get to know one another at the recent Fedora Camp held at Duke University Libraries on November 16-18. Five instructors including Aaron Coburn, Amherst College, Esme Cowles, Princeton University Library, Mike Durbin, University of Virginia, David Wilcox, Fedora Product Manager of DuraSpace and Andrew Woods, Fedora Tech Lead of DuraSpace led camp sessions. The curriculum led the group through in-depth technical “deep dive” sessions as well as question and answer discussions regarding features, migrations, data modeling, indexing for search and discovery, extending Fedora, and more. Slides and other materials from the camp can be found on the wiki [15].

Upcoming Events

IDCC

The 11th International Digital Curation Conference [16] (IDCC) will take place in Amsterdam February 22-25, 2016. This year a Fedora 4 Workshop will be held as part of IDCC on Feb. 22. This full-day workshop will demonstrate Fedora 4's capabilities through hands-on instruction, including data modelling, linked data best practices, and integrations with search applications and triplestores. The workshop will be presented by Aaron Coburn, Amherst College and Neil Jefferies, Oxford University. No prior Fedora 4 experience is required. Please register in advance [17].

Hydra Camp and Regional Meeting

Data Curation Experts will lead a four-day Hydra Camp hosted by the University of California Santa Barbara Library on February 22-25, 2016. Hydra Camp is open to all developers interested in building skills working with the Hydra technology framework. The 4-day course costs $925 and can accommodate 30 participants. For more details, and to register, please click here [18].

Following Hydra Camp, UC Santa Barbara will host a regional Hydra meeting on Friday, February 26.

References

[1]  https://jira.duraspace.org/issues/?filter=13121
[2]  http://www.duraspace.org/become_a_member
[3]  http://fedorarepository.org/leadership-group
[4]  http://fedorarepository.org/membership
[5]  https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/High-level+Requirements
[6]  https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/Use+Cases+-+API+Extension+Architecture
[7]  https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/fedora-community
[8]  https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/Fedora+Four+Prospectus
[9]  https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/Performance+and+Scalability
[10] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/Performance+and+Scalability+Test+Plans
[11] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/2015-12-21+Performance+-+Scale+Meeting
[12] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/2016-01-11+Performance+-+Scale+Meeting
[13] http://midatlanticfedorausers.org/schedule/
[14] http://midatlanticfedorausers.org/
[15] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/Events/Fedora+Camp+-+16-18+November+2015
[16] http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/idcc16
[17] http://www.epay.ed.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=2&deptid=80&catid=96&prodid=2125
[18] http://www.eventbrite.com/e/hydra-camp-uc-santa-barbara-2016-tickets-19930212803

[1]