DuraSpace Membership Newsletter
August 18, 2016
MESSAGE FROM THE CEO
The summer has flown by and I hope everyone has had some vacation time spent recharging! I enjoyed seeing many of you in Charlottesville at the SHARE Annual Meeting in July. The presentations were interesting, and as usual, the conversations at breaks helped spark ideas for new collaborations. This summer we've focused on establishing greater working relationships with global partners talking with Mark Leggott at Research Data Canada, Kathleen Shearer at COAR, and Michele Mennielli at CINECA about ways to collaborate to promote open data and research internationally. I look forward to sharing details about these efforts in the coming months.
This week I am traveling to Denver, Colorado to attend the 7th Annual VIVO Conference. The conference is an excellent opportunity to meet with researchers and administrators from around the world to learn more about VIVO at their institutions and to explore collaborative opportunities. A detailed Conference schedule can be found online at http://www.vivoconference.org/.
Finally, thanks to all of you for renewing your DuraSpace memberships and for your commitment to community support of open source software. If you have colleagues at institutions who are not yet members, please let me know and I will reach out to them. While we need paid memberships to sustain our work together, we also need strong, vibrant communities to grow our projects and meet vital, ongoing needs. Thank all of you who are involved in leadership, training, code contribution, and other community activities. You are the reason we're here!
I look forward to seeing many of you at conferences and meetings this fall (see "Where We'll Be" below) Until then, enjoy the rest of the summer!
Warm regards,
Debra Hanken Kurtz
CEO
2016 Membership update
Many thanks to our members who have already renewed their membership for 2016, and to those who have joined DuraSpace for the first time as new members. Members have so far contributed $908,750; 113 members joining DuraSpace in the vital effort to provide technical leadership, sustainability planning, fundraising, community development, marketing and communications, collaborations and strategic partnerships and administration to the DSpace, Fedora and VIVO projects. Read more here.
Here's the breakdown:
Total: $908,750; 113 members; 72% of budget
- DSpace $172,000; 64% of budget
- Fedora $459,750; 58; 79%
- VIVO $204,500; 15; 63%
- General $72,500; 15; 91%
PROJECTS
FEDORA
Fedora project community members are on the road all over the world this fall–from Germany, Switzerland, and all over the US you can touch base face-to-face with team members in multiple locations. See "Where We'll Be" below. Activities include training and opportunities to learn more about the growing Fedora community of users and developers.
DSPACE
Now that summer holidays are coming to a close work continues toward the public release of DSpace 6.0 due later this month. Thanks to those members who have pitched in to test release candidates and identify areas of improvement over the last two months.
What to look for in DSpace 6.0:
- A major refactor of our underlying Java API (supporting UUIDs and Hibernate) which will help ease ongoing maintenance efforts and better support future roadmap goals and new UI implementation. See https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/DSpace+Service+based+api
- Enhanced configuration system, supporting auto-reloadable configurations and easier management of local settings (via a local.cfg file). See https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/Enhanced+Configuration+Scheme
- Enhanced file (bitstream) storage plugins, including support for Amazon S3 file storage. Seehttps://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSDOC6x/Storage+Layer#StorageLayer-ConfiguringtheBitstreamStore
- Configurable site healthcheck (i.e. repository status) reports via email. See https://jira.duraspace.org/browse/DS-2659
- REST API enhancements:
- Robust quality control reports for collection managers built on the REST API. See https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSDOC6x/REST+Based+Quality+Control+Reports
- Support for all authentication methods via REST (e.g. Shibboleth, LDAP, etc)
- XMLUI enhancements:
- New framework for metadata import from external sources (including out-of-the-box plugins supporting PubMed and ScienceDirect). This concept was previously only supported in JSPUI.
- Extensible administrative control panel
- Export of XMLUI search results to CSV (for bulk metadata editing). This feature was previously only supported in JSPUI.
(Tim Donohue and list any dspace-related events you or other staff will attend below)
VIVO
This week the VIVO community kicks off the 7th Annual VIVO Conference in Denver with workshops, keynotes, invited speakers, panels, project sessions and more. A focus on OpenVIVO, a VIVO that anyone can join, and a panel discussion, "Persistent Identifiers: Where we are now and the role of Networking Profile Systems in Shaping Their Future" are among many conference highlights.
You can help VIVO by participating in a short survey of all organizations considering VIVO, implementing VIVO or maintaining VIVO. The survey should take no more than 10 minutes to complete and does not require technical expertise. Please help us set new directions for VIVO by sharing your thoughts and experiences with us. The survey is anonymous. We would be happy to hear from each member of the VIVO community. Survey results will be tabulated and presented in a poster at the VIVO Conference and on this wiki following the conference.
Please take 10 minutes to share your thoughts about VIVO with us. The survey is here: https://goo.gl/rkr964
(Mike Conlon please edit/add and list any VIVO-related events you or other staff will attend below)
SERVICES
New users and the suite of DuraSpace Web Services
DuraSpace would like to extend a warm welcome to the newest DuraCloud users:
DuraSpace offers a full suite of flexible hosted services that allow you to easily access, manage, process, and preserve actively used digital content at the same time as taking advantage of all the benefits of the cloud. DuraCloud–the comprehensive, hosted digital preservation service–has been compared with other cloud services and has received high marks for data integrity, reliability, scalability, retention and portability. Specifically, the Digital POWRR Project’s white paper noted DuraCloud’s ease-of-use, quick customer service and competitive pricing.
DuraSpace Web Services include ArchivesDirect, DSpaceDirect, and DuraCloud. Learn more about any of the hosted services DuraSpace offers, please visit their web sites or contact
