2025-08-20 DSpace Leadership Group Meeting

Date

20 Aug 2025 11:00 am-1:00 pm EDT (Eastern Daylight Savings 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
  
• Andrea Bollini 4Science*
• Bill Branan Johns Hopkins University
• Kimberly Chapman University of Arizona Libraries (Ex-officio, DCAT Chair)
• Maggie Dickson  Duke University
• Lieven Droogmans Atmire*
• Mohit Garg Indian Institute of Technology Delhi**
• Scott Hanrath * (non-voting Steering attendee)
• 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*
• 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*

DSpace staff 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

Staffing

• Maureen thanked everyone for reviewing the Draft PD and adding comments
• Next steps for this: the PD will be sent to Lyrasis HR for review and then will move on to posting

Financials

• Bridget reviewed the end of year financials.
• Total revenues for the year were a positive variance.  Total expenses were just $604 more than the revised budget that was approved in September 2024 (for the increase in Holger’s hours.)  The total net income for the year, the total net assets, and the amounts earmarked as Reserve Fund and as Development Fund represent a strong year-over-year performance for DSpace.
• Maureen thanked the members, RSPs and all of Leadership for supporting DSpace in kind with time and or financial contributions. She noted that it wasn't that long ago that DSpace was looking at a different situation and DSpace is really grateful for all the work everyone has done.

Membership

• Holger shared membership update.
• Although DSpace has lost 4 members who didn’t renew (1 Gold and 3 Bronze), we have added 2 new individual members( 1 Gold and 1 Silver) and also converted 3 SCOSS consortia to members so renewals are close to budget (less than $1k less than budgeted).
•  

Elections

• 3 membership tiers are eligible to stand for election (Gold, Silver, Bronze)
• 1 for every 2 gold members, 1 for 4 silver members, 1 for every 8 bronze members
• Total seats: 14
• Gold: 7 seats (8 nominees)
• Silver: 4 seats (5 nominees)
• Bronze: 3 seats (1 nominee
• Mic and Holger suggest Leadership consider not holding elections for Silver and Gold and filling all 14 seats  (i.e. fill the 2 empty Bronze seats with the extra nominees for Silver and Gold)
• Discussion:
  • Answer: We are past the deadline, and Holger did do outreach to everyone. Also working on process improvements: did make sure this year that the emails got to the right people. Holger is working on a video for next year to help make the process clearer. Will also have a webinar on governance.
  • Answer: no, because leadership is a 1-year term
• Question: would outreach result in additional nominations for bronze?
• Additional suggestion: next year, perhaps an option for increasing the number of nominees would be for members of leadership or DCAT to help out by reaching out to their peers nationally.
• Additional suggestion: maybe in the outreach messages it can be stressed that library/repository managers/service directors are also very welcome – IT skills/experience aren’t required
• Question: if we add extra Gold and Silver members how does that work for next year's elections, will we have seats that are occupied that shouldn't be?
• Clarification needed on Platinum RSP eligibility – certified vs not. Chair will take this offline to resolve.  
• Leadership voted on this proposal: Fill leadership member tier seats with available nominees.
• The vote passed, with 17 for, 0 against, 0 abstained

Steering Nominations and Chair/Vice-Chair

• 3 seats coming up (Pascal, Agustina and Maureen have terms ending)
• Steering is a 3-year term
• Maureen will be sending out an email for Steering nominations
• Once Steering is seated, Maureen will send out a call for nominations for chair and vice-chair
• All needs to be done by November

Community-at-Large Elections

• 2 voting seats
• 5 Nominees
• Leadership can also appoint an ex-officio non-voting seat
• Discussion about candidates:
  • Answer: Yes but it’s not the only deciding factor.
• Clarification requested: is the intention to broaden global participation?
• Suggestion: wait on ex-officio appointment until after the DCAT chair position is filled
• Suggestion: consider the ratio of DSpace users to existing members in a region, and potential for increase in members resulting from exposure to governance
• Election will be held off-line after the meeting (Maureen will send out ballot via email)

Round-Robin Year in Review

• Appreciated communications to keep Leadership informed and involved especially around the topic of the potential merger with DSpace-CRIS. Should think about how Leadership members can be involved in that process, not leaving everything to Steering.
• It is helpful to get a quick checklist of things to know to use as a reference guide for prep and participation.
• Appreciate the updates from Steering that come out after every Steering meeting. However, the quarterly cadence can feel too disconnected.  Wondering if it really allows the work to be done.
• Suggestion: bi-monthly hourly meetings?
• Concern: Agendas as they exist are too large for that, so that might mean a different structure for agendas.
• Really glad we've had so many new faces.

Development

• August is the slowest month, people are on holidays
• Maintenance releases were published in July for versions 7, 8 and 9 to fix security flaws and some bugs
• Development will start to ramp up in September

RSP Program

• Mic reviewed the status of the RSP program
• Contributions submitted: > 3k hours of tech contributions and >2k of non-tech
• Contributions accepted: 1.9k hours of tech and 1.6k of non-tech
• (Note: these numbers don’t include a Platinum RSP for which submission is still pending )
• Mic reviewed the process and evaluation criteria for both types of contributions and the evolution since the pilot in 2022-2023
• There is a greater proportion of technical contributions (lowering financial contributions)
• The platinum contributions dropped. This is partly due to the outstanding info from the Platinum provider. Two Platinum providers also had work they didn't submit because it was paid through other sources
• The other tiers of RSPs are contributing more
• Quality of contributions is also increasing
• Provider reports are available on the wiki

Future Planning - DSpace-CRIS Merger

• Technology Group:
• Have identified a tentative technical approach that would accomplish the merge in 2 stages over 2 major releases.
• Still have a lot of work to do before can finalize this approach. Not sure if it would be releases 10 and 11 or 11 and 12.
• Trying to develop plans for both paths
• Strategy Group:
  • shared the Strategic Vision Document (https://groups.google.com/g/dspace-community/c/EnwBLm_Ut0I/m/C4wFEoCFBAAJ) that highlights the potential and some considerations for how to go about it
  • distributed a feedback form ([https://tally.so/r/mZLgjv](https://tally.so/r/mZLgjv)) for people to add questions and provide feedback
  • Answer: there is a public demo but not a sandbox. Accounts are available to members of the technical and strategy working groups.
  • Answer: No date yet.  The work of the two groups as charged wraps up between October and December. Outputs will go to Steering and then we'll go from there.  Technical perspective is that we need a decision as soon as possible. Likely earliest is late September or early October. Strategy group is going to try to shoot for early October for recommendations document.
• 2 updates have been sent to community
• Planning a webinar q&a session for the end of September
• Will be releasing a recommendations document on the pros and cons
• Need to figure out if and how to extend the work of the strategy group
• Question: Is there a DSpace CRIS sandbox like there is for DSpace?
• Question: Do we have a target date by when we are shooting to make a go/no-go decision about the merger?

Vision Group

• Reviving and reconstituting this group
• A Steering task group (Maureen and Erica) is drafting a charge for Steering
• May carry on the work of the merger Strategy group
• Anyone who wants to work on this the draft charge should to let Maureen or Erica know

Governance

• Continuing to draft the by-laws

DCAT

• This is Kimberly's last meeting as DCAT chair
• Continue to have well-attended DCAT meetings
• Have a small working group forming to look at an issue to try to determine if it's a demo site problem or a service provider problem
• Excited about upcoming nominations process for the new DCAT chair
• Kimberly will connect with Maureen about updating the description of the DCAT chair responsibilities
• It would be nice to get the nominations out by early September so that Steering can appoint the new chair
• Kimberly expecting to stay involved with DCAT and maybe to help organize the documentation working groups
• Fur the future, need to explore what the role is of DCAT and best way to be involved and accomplish goals around improving the application
• Have a lot of Canadian and US participation but there are timezone issues with participation from DSpace users in other areas of the globe.  Hoping user groups can help engage.
• Maureen commented that it’s been great to see the engagement and thanks Kimberly for her leadership.

Communications/Outreach

• DSpace Deep Dive webinar series is now live at https://dspace.org/webinars/
• Holger thanks everyone for their feedback
• Sept 3: DSpace 9.x Q&A Session
• Oct 15: Moving from bepress to DSpace
• All should consider contacting Holger or submitting form with your ideas for webinars
• Can bundle presentations together so don't have to be a full hour
• Governance Elections Process video
• Holger is working on a video to explain the process, should have a prototype before the end of this leadership term

Global Outreach

• Congratulations to Mic on his promotion to Director of Global Outreach at Lyrasis
• A few new service providers have reached out about trying the program
• Mic will be talking to all of them in the next week and will advise
• Potential Consortium membership in Poland - trying to see if the process can be sped up and have them join before the new governance term starts, not sure if it will be possible
• Poland National User Group is trying to decide whether to run an event next year to reach out to more countries in Eastern Europe.  Might be a way to disseminate information about Consortium model.
• Also trying to coordinate another workshop and webinar in India.

Community

• Potentially thinking about a meeting in Europe next year with OR being virtual only.  Early stages at this point.
• Potential North American user group meeting in 2026. No specifics yet.

Lyrasis

• LA Referencia, Lautaro provided an update:
  • Would like to look at things like additional PIDs, improved installation
• Presented mid-year report on the project
• Planning work was successful
• Have made contributions to the code
• Documentation translated to Portuguese and Spanish
• Adding an angular developer to be able to contribute more to the ui
• Planning to have a workshop at the end of this year to plan the next year
• Community is very happy with the results and the team is working very well

Future Meeting Topics

• Meeting cadence
• Organizational Home Cost Structure and Service Level Agreement - final draft

Other business

• Maureen thanks everyone for their contributions
• Leadership members thanked Maureen for her leadership as chair.

Adjourned at 12:57

Action Items

• Leadership notes