2020-01-22 DSpace Leadership Group Meeting

fAttendees

• Pascal-Nicolas Becker (The Library Code)*

• Allan Bell (University of British Columbia Library) 

• John Butler (University of Minnesota)*

• Suzanne Chase (Georgetown University)

• Lieven Droogmans (Atmire)*

• Federico Ferrario / Roberto Suardi (Cineca)

• Scott Hanrath (University of Kansas) 

• Barbara Hirschmann (ETH Zurich) 

• Jyrki Ilva (National Library of Finland)*

• Jayan Kurian (University of Sunshine Coast)
  

• Pierre Lasou (Université Laval)

• Mariya Maistrovskaya (University of Toronto)

• Agustina Martinez Garcia (University of Cambridge)* 

• Lautaro Julián Matas (LA Referencia / RedCLARA)

• João Mendes Moreira (Foundation of Science and Technology Portugal)* 

• Susanna Mornati (4Science)*

• César Olivares (CONCYTEC)*

• Jere Odell (Indiana University Purdue University Indiana)

• Kristi Park (Texas Digital Library) - Chair

• Beate Rajski (Hamburg University of Technology)
• Gail Steinhart (Cornell University)

• Maureen Walsh (The Ohio State University Libraries)*

LYRASIS

• Laurie Arp
• Michele Mennielli
• Robert Miller
• Tim Donohue
• Heather Greer Klein

The  represents who will be taking notes for a given meeting. It rotates after each meeting to the next person in the attendee list.

*Members of DSpace Steering Group

Meeting time:  12AM-1PM GMT-5

Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android:  https://lyrasis.zoom.us/j/9963190968  (Meeting ID: 996 319 0968)

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Meeting ID: 996 319 0968
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Agenda

NOTES:

#1 Welcome new leaders
Kristi welcomes the new "community-at-large" members of the Leadership Group.
Lautaro Matas from La Referencia introduces himself, he is original from Argentina but now living in Spain, Technical Manager for La Referencia network, harvesting hundreds repositories in Latin America, mostly DSpace in different versions. His role here would be to engage developers form this large community to collaborate in DSpace evolution.
Jayan cannot be present today, in Australia is not a convenient time and Kristi will try to find a solution with Michele for scheduling meetings to accommodate everybody.

#2 Quarterly financial report
Laurie is unable to attend today's meeting, Kristi reports from the notes left by Laurie.
Laurie will attend in February and provide projections. The budget is positive. DSpace is currently ahead of projections. There are no questions on the budget.

#3 LYRASIS line of credit for DSpace development and fundraising update
Kristi introduces the opportunity to have extra funds from Lyrasis for DSpace 7 paid development, which was already discussed in previous meetings. The Steering Group revised the proposal and agrees to accept it. There is a draft agreement for a line of credit from Lyrasis that would guarantee available funds for paid development on DSpace 7. Funding is $100,000 (no need to use all of it) and is repeatable three times, up to 300,000$, with interest of LIBOR+4.0% per year, which is covering Lyrasis' cost of money.
Kristi reminds that it would be good to have the same experienced developers who have worked at DSpace 7 so far, so the work was proposed to Atmire and 4Science. She reports from the discussion group, commissioned by the SG, composed by Kristi Park, Jyrki Ilva, Lieven Droogmans, Susanna Mornati, Tim Donohue, and Laurie Arp. The group discussed some practical issues, such as how development work would be structured and how payments would be made. Atmire and 4Science agreed to make staff available (3,25 FTE between them). Work will start in February with two-week sprints. Work is already underway under the beta release schedule so there is a question about remuneration for work already done in January.
Robert explains that Lyrasis tried to make this proposal non-profit friendly, to allow the community to move forward. The line of credit will allow the community to rely on stable resources from the service providers.
Allan has an issue about the signature of a contract with DSpace which is not a legal entity. Kristi has the same issue but she could sign as an individual, she needs to work out this detail. Jirky says this should not constitute a problem in his institution.
Discussion: should DSpace become an incorporated company? Or should Lyrasis manage the contracts?
Kristi thinks Lyrasis is acting in good faith but her organization may be more formal, so a solution has to be found, Robert and Jirky and herself will work on that. Robert will bring information on how ArchiveSpace was constituted.
Pascal still has some doubts about the opportunity of getting a loan at all. If it is not guaranteed that the DSpace community is not able to refund the loan, it may run into some risks such as Tim not being full time for DSpace.
Kristi agrees there is always a risk involved in opening a line of credit but it allows to have money available before fundraising is completed, and it is coming in (Robert will update about it).

#4 Fundraising update
Robert relates about the fundraising campaign that is underway: Texas Digital Library committed 10,000$ as a first sign of trust, this is just the beginning. Individuals and institutions were identified and contacted, to participate in the campaign, explaining them the reasons why they should contribute, and there are already some who agreed to raise their contribution to the community for this purpose, so the campaign is starting successfully (TDL - $10K, Univ of Az - $7K, Duke - $10K, LYRASIS - $5K, it makes $32,000 already committed).
John adds that he is working on funding at the University of Minnesota and is confident in signaling a special one-time contribution of $10,000, in addition to membership (it makes $42.000 committed).

Kristi encourages more discussion on the line of credit and fundraising.
Pascal is pessimistic about raising more money in Germany specifically for DSpace 7, although there are efforts by him and Beate to increase the number of memberships in the country.
Pascal is also raising an issue about the MoU in general, and Kristi proposes to have a conversation on that.
Robert is concerned that without a formal Line of Credit, service providers may have not enough confidence about Lyrasis' ability to pay them.
Tim says it is difficult to manage deadlines with volunteers so funding is useful to get reliable resources to make accurate predictions about the releases.
Kristi remarks that predictability is needed to be able to speed up the release.
Gail asks if this policy is going to make a change in the long term.
Kristi says it is a great point, although it does not need to be addressed now. Communication needs to be prepared.
Lieven says that development for DSpace 7 is exceptional for the new architecture and the amount of new features, but it should not happen again in the next few releases, until this technology will become obsolete.
Tim adds that in releases 5 and 6 there were more volunteers from the community, so this situation for version 7 is not the normality.
Kristi: voting for the draft for the Line of Credit, motion passes with 17 votes in favour, 15 from the community members (Jere Odell, Jyrki Ilva, Suzanne Chase, Gail Steinhart, John Butler, Kristi Park, César Olivares, Barbara Hirschmann, Mariya Maistrovskaya, Maureen Walsh, Beate Rajski, Scott Hanrath, Allan Bell, Pierre Lasou, Lautaro Matas) plus 1 from the Certified Partners (Pascal Becker) and 1 from Lyrasis (Robert Miller). Kristi, Jyrki, and Robert will work on how to proceed with it and report back to the LG.

#5 Work Group formation
Back in the summer, two groups were working on different aspects of strategic planning that were put on hold during these crucial decisions on DSpace 7, but Kristi would like to resume them, one would be an extension of the fundraising group, the other is to help Michele in strategies for recruiting new members.
Michele adds that one of the strategies is to work with the national users' groups, engagement is a key aspect together with recruitment.
Pascal and Beate published an article in German about the German DSpace Consortium.
The German DSpace User Group will happen in Hamburg on 26-27 March 2020.