2024-11-20 DSpace Leadership Group Meeting

Date

20 Nov 2024 11:00 am-1:00 pm EST (Eastern Standard Time)

Zoom:  Link in calendar invite

Leadership Group Members

• Bridget AlmasLyrasis* (Ex-officio, Lyrasis seat)
• Pascal-Nicolas Becker The Library Code*
• Isabel Bernal Spanish National Research Council CSIC
  
• Bill Branan Johns Hopkins University
• Kimberly Chapman University of Arizona Libraries (Ex-officio, DCAT Chair)
• user-58958 Duke University
• Lieven Droogmans Atmire*
• Mohit Garg Indian Institute of Technology Delhi**
• Barbara Hirschmann ETH Zurich
• Jyrki Ilva National Library of Finland
•  Owen Iyoha, Eko-Konnect Research and Education Initiative**
  
• Erica Johns* (non-voting Steering attendee)
• Ed Kirkland University of Nottingham
• James MacKenzie University of New Brunswick 
  
• Agustina Martinez-Garcia University of Cambridge*
• Lautaro Matas  LA Referencia***
  
• Erik Moore University of Minnesota*
  
• Susanna Mornati (4Science) 4Science*
• Jere Odell  IU Indianapolis
• Kristi Park Texas Digital Library*
• Beate Rajski DSpace-Konsortium Deutschland
• Julien Sicot EPFL
• Paschal Ssemaganda World Bank Group
• Carolyn Sullivan University of Ottawa
• Ianthe Sutherland University of Edinburgh
• Maureen Walsh Chair, The Ohio State University Libraries*

Lyrasis attendees

• Tim Donohue 
• Holger Lenz 
• Michele Mennielli 

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

**Community At Large Representative

***Ex-officio member nominated by the Leadership Group as representative of the community at large. Ex-officio members do not have voting rights

Agenda

Notes

1 Welcome

Maureen welcomes the new Leadership Group for its first meeting. A round of introductions is held. Maureen thanks the note taker Beate Rajski.

2 Resources

Maureen describes the resources available to the Leadership Group and listed in the agenda. Steering meeting notes are not public. Everyone from Leadership should have access. The link to DSpace-CRIS videos by 4science will be added to the list.

3 Elections

Election of Vice Chair was not successful because the quorum was not reached. A new call for nominations will be sent out by Maureen. The Vice Chair serves for Leadership and Steering. This a one-year renewable term. The Vice Chair does not automatically succeed the Chair.

4 Development

• Currently working on Version 9.0, which will be mainly a maintenance release focussing on improving performance / scalability in general, accessibility fixes and code cleanup / maintenance. The release date has been postponed from April to May 2025 due to scheduling conflicts.
• 8.1 and 7.6.3 are planned as security and bug fixes and backport for performance and accessibility fixes. Release probably early in 2025.
• DSpaceDirect, a registered service provider, donates a full VPAT (Voluntary Product Accessiblity Template) to DSpace. VPAT is US centric, but it is based on international standards for accessibility like WCAG.

5 Future Planning

At the end of the last governance year, the Leadership Group approved a measure to investigate a potential merger of DSpace-CRIS into DSpace. An overview of the potential merger was sent to all new leadership members. There will be two working groups. One on strategic planning and one on technology planning. Steering is working of drafting charges for both working groups. This will also determine who will be member of the group. The recommended charges will be presented to Leadership offline via email for review, suggestions and comments and then approval. The groups can then be formed. They will report back to the Steering Group. 
Although a merger will not take place before DSpace 10, it will impact the development of 9.0. No contributions will be accepted that could hinder a possible merger.

6 First quarter of financials

Bridget excuses the late sent out.

• The overall status is positive as compared to budget, but still early in the new fiscal year
• SCOSS pledges were received and the campaign ended
• Membership went down by 4,000. There is no recent loss of members. Two left in May due to software changes.
• A reserve fund for the unexpected has been has been set up

Maureen: Next meeting we will talk about potential new members and fundraising.

7 DSpace Community Advisory Team (DCAT)

Update on DCAT update by Kimberly

• DCAT generally convenes the second Tuesday of the month, at 12:00 Eastern Time. This allows European and Pacific members to join. Good attendance worldwide on a mainly volunteer basis
• Testathon will be planned for 9.0
• DCAT will propose a theme for 2024-2025
• Several wg Documentation, taks-oriendted orgientation group. Also repository manager documentation which requires translating technich documentation for this focus.
• Working group on task-oriented documentation and translation, which has still a lot of gaps compared to technical documentation. Focus on DSpace 7 which is mainly used among members. 9 is not expected to make major changes necessary.
• Intent to understand the implication of the potential merger of DSpace-CRIS into DSpace. Most DCAT members do not use entities yet.

Leadership thanks Kimberly and DCAT for the great work they are doing.

8 Break

9 DSpace Governance Working Group

• The revised MOU between DSpace and Lyrasis was approved in last governance year.
• Next up is working on drafting bylaws for DSpace.

10 Membership

• TIB Hannover & UB Erlangen-Nürnberg join the German Consortium (both bronze)
• Network of Spanish university and scientific libraries approved membership this week

11 Community

User Groups:

• List of existing DSpace User Groups
• Swiss National User Group: meeting online on Dec 5.
• DSpace Praxistreffen in Bamberg for German speaking DSpace community on March 27/28
• Indian User Group: Two Day ORCID GPF Supported National Workshop on DSpace, 23 -24 September 2024

Fedora AI Discussion Series:

• Isabel attended a Fedora workshop on AI bots. AI Discussion Series - Fedora Community Conversations. The discussion series is open beyond Fedora since this a performance problem for most live repository sites.
• Tim will initiate a DSpace documentation page with tipps and best practice for solutions against aggressive AI bots.
• There were also presentations on AI problems at OR2024 and and the North American User Group Meeting.
• Bill Branan: How could we use AI in DSpace
• Atmire and 4Science: Performance issues on live systems are more important
• AI should be an agenda item for next leadership meeting

Marketing Working Group

• Item for next leadership meeting

12 OR2025

• Many LG members will visit Open Repsitories Conference in 2025. A meetup should be scheduled.
• Tim set up a wiki page DSpace at OR2025 For potential proposals regarding DSpace. Everyone should add their ideas. It is an opportunity to pair people up.
• DSpace will be submitting for Repository Showdown
• Deadline: 18 Dec 2024

13 Meetings

Suggestions for future meeting agenda items/topics can be added to the agenda. If possible the should include interactions.

Possible agenda points for next meeting:

• AI
• Marketing
• Membership and fundraising
• DSpace-CRIS: Tim suggests a DSpace-CRIS demo

13 Other business

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Decisions

Outcomes

Possible Agenda items for next LG meeting

• DSpace-CRIS presentation
• AI: Bots and more
• Marketing
• Membership and fundraising

Action Items

• New member: Check access to Steering meeting notes
  
• Add potential proposals to DSpace at OR2025 18 Dec 2024
• Tim Donohue Ask 4science for DSpace-CRIS demo at next LG if applicable Type your task here, using "@" to assign to a user and "//" to select a due date
•  Tim Donohue set up wiki page for collaborative documentation on AI bots
  
•  Maureen Walsh facilitate offline election on vice chair