DuraSpace Membership Newsletter
January 18, 2016
MESSAGE FROM THE CEO
The winter months are an opportunity to take stock of what's working and what requires more attention. As we look forward to 2017 and beyond, we continue to explore new opportunities to grow our organization to serve our communities more effectively.
DuraSpace recently completed a Strategic Plan that outlines opportunities and priorities for the next two calendar years and identifies resources needed to realize these goals. The plan is the result of internal assessment and external review and is a critical analysis of DuraSpace, its current programs, services, and activities. I'd like to thank Declan Fleming for interviewing stakeholders, both members and non-members, to critique our programs and to provide honest feedback on our organization. I would like to also thank those participants for their time and candor, your direct and honest feedback is fundamental to forging strong relationships and to improving our programs and services.
As our members and key partners in advancing our shared goals, I invite you to review the Strategic Plan (link) and to share your feedback with me <dkurtz@duraspace.org>.
In 2016 the Hydra-In-A-Box Project began development of the HykuDirect service that will become part of the DuraSpace suite of hosted services. In 2017, along with partners at DPLA and Stanford University, we will continue work on HykuDirect, a hosted Hydra-based institutional repository with DuraCloud serving as a preservation backend. Sign up for the Hydra-In-A-Box newsletter here. Seems awkward to call out one initiative after strat plan paragraph. Should eliminate or add others.
Warm regards,
Debra Hanken Kurtz
CEO
DURASPACE MEMBER SUMMIT
DuraSpace Member Summit, April 4-5, 2017
The 2017 DuraSpace Member Summit will be held on April 3-4 directly following the CNI Spring 2017 Meeting at the Hyatt Regency in Albuquerque, New Mexico. More information to follow later this month.
PROJECTS
FEDORA
Fedora 4 at Johns Hopkins, towards preservation solutions,
Sayeed Choudhury, Associate Dean for Research Data Management and Hodson Director of the Digital Research and Curation Center (DRCC) at the Sheridan Libraries of Johns Hopkins University, discusses why Fedora 4 with “baked in” linked data capabilities appeals to his organization. He said, "We believe that it can be extended with API-X to improve the native functionality of a Fedora 4 repository. These improvements extend the utility of Fedora’s core feature set by facilitating the mapping of the many and varied domain models currently in use by research communities onto Fedora’s semantic-web-based data model and interface." Read more here.
The API Extensions Framework provides a means to add functionality to Fedora using standardized, sharable components. The Fedora API Extension Architecture (API-X) recently released the framework to the community for testing. Read more here. (link to come)
Fedora Leadership Group members from Northwestern University, Stanford University, the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Virginia participated in a vigorous panel discussion on the role of Fedora in a digital preservation solution at the recent 2016 CNI Fall Membership Meeting. Read more here.
The first milestone release of the API Extension Architecture is now publicly available. A Docker-based demonstration of API-X with accompanying step-by-step evaluation guide has been prepared for those who are interested in concretely exploring API-X and providing valuable feedback. Please take a look at it, give it a try, and provide feedback. An introductory video providing an overview of API-X can also be found on YouTube. Read more here.
DSPACE
DSpace 7 Progress; Outreach Interest Group
Every other Thursday a large group of developers from countries all over the world gather online to map out priorities and next steps towards developing DSpace 7 with an Angular 2 UI. While coding is not yet underway the group is investigating many exciting ideas. Atmire has updated design documents including Angular 2 documentation and an early view of what the technical stack will look like (add links). Work is also progressing on DSpace rest API clean up in preparation for integration into DSpace 7. Be on the look out for ways to contribute to discussions on lists. The community will also be offered an opportunity to join day-to-day conversations by signing up for a new slack channel dedicated to DSpace 7 development.
DSpace tech lead for DuraSpace Tim Donohue says, "Much remains to be done to have an alpha version of DSpace 7 available for testing in 2017. Stay tuned for broad calls for participation in DSpace 7 development."
This week (Wednesday, January 18 at 12:00 PM ET; UTC 17:00) the DSpace 7 Outreach Group will begin planning for how to contribute to DSpace 7 development. Contact Carol Minton Morris <cmmorris@duraspace.org> if you would like to attend.
VIVO
VIVO 2017 Conference Call for Proposals and Updates; VIVO Camp
SERVICES
We are pleased to welcome new DSpaceDirect customers University of Tampa, Yakima Valley Libraries, North American Jewish Culture Inc., and Copenhagen School of Design and Technology. We also welcome new DuraCloud customer The Wildlife Conservation Society Library & Archives.
ArchivesDirect, DSpaceDirect, and DuraCloud services from DuraSpace are built on solid open source software platforms and require very little effort to start up. DuraSpace staff experts work directly with service customers to provide personalized on-boarding processes and superb customer support. Our services can provide open access to institutional resources, preservation of treasured collections, and simplified data management tools. Contact customersupport@duraspace.org to learn more about any of the web services DuraSpace offers.
