This is the March 2017 edition of the Fedora Newsletter. This newsletter summarizes the most significant activities within the Fedora community over the last month.
Call for Action
Fedora is designed, built, used, and supported by the community. An easy and important way that you can contribute to the effort is by helping resolve outstanding bugs. If you have an interest in gaining a better understanding of the Fedora code base, or a specific interest in any of these bugs, please add a comment to a ticket and we can work together to move your interest forward.
Software development
Standards
Fedora API Specification
The Fedora community is working to establish a clearly defined specification for the core Fedora services. This specification details the exact services and interactions required for a server implementation to be verified as "doing Fedora".
The draft specification has been published and is looking for community comments. Following this round of input, we plan on an initial release of the specification in the spring of 2017.
Fedora API Adopters Guide
An inaugural meeting for creating organized documentation targeting developers of applications and frameworks that currently interact with Fedora 4 was held on February 10.
As the formalization of the Fedora API Specification matures, it will be increasingly important for existing applications and frameworks over Fedora to adjust client/server interactions to the specification. The services defined in the Fedora API Specification are the same ones that are currently provided by Fedora 4, but the interaction models in some cases are changing to be more in line with broader standards. The effort of this group is to facilitate the adjustment of client-side tooling by detailing the "deltas" between the current Fedora 4 implementation and the emerging specification.
Please stay tuned for updates and opportunities for engagement.
Community-driven Activity
Import/Export Tooling
API Extension Architecture
The first milestone release of the API Extension Architecture is now publically 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. An introductory video providing an overview of API-X can also be found on YouTube. This milestone and demo represent the culmination of a year of design and development effort from a broad swath of the Fedora community, and has been helped along by an IMLS National Digital Platform grant. The next milestone release is planned for late March.
The API-X team holds regular monthly meetings. The next meeting will take place on Thursday, March 16 at 1pm Eastern time.
Conferences and events
In an attempt to simplify the task of keeping up with Fedora-related meetings and events, a Fedora calendar is available to the community as HTML and iCal .
Upcoming Events
Code4Lib
The annual Code4Lib conference, which takes place March 6-9 in Los Angeles, CA, is an annual gathering of technologists from around the world, who largely work for and with libraries, archives, and museums and have a commitment to open technologies. The conference will feature several Fedora-related workshops, including Fedora Import/Export, Islandora in the Wild, and Performance and Scale Testing of Fedora. Please register in advance if you plan to attend.
DC Area Fedora User Group Meeting
The Washington D.C. Area Fedora Users Group meets twice annually to share project updates, exchange ideas, and collaborate on Fedora-related activities. The next meeting will take place March 22-23 at the Library of Congress. The meetings are open to anyone who would like to attend.
LDCX
LDCX is an annual unconference that brings together leading technologists in the libraries, archives and museums (LAM) spaces, to work collaboratively on common needs. The event will take place March 27-29 at Stanford University. Registration is complimentary, and please register at the LDCX 2017 Eventbrite if you are interested in attending.
Hydra Developer Congress
The Hydra Developer Congress emphasizes community code exchange and moving community development goals forward. This can include, but is not limited to, the topics listed in this year's agenda, as well as development issues and recommendations that may surface as priorities from the Hydra community, working groups, and interest groups. If you are a developer with a signed Hydra contributor license agreement (CLA) -- or are confident that you can submit a signed CLA by mid-March -- and you're available to attend the meeting, please register online. Registration is complimentary.
CNI Spring Meeting and DuraSpace Summit
The CNI Spring membership meeting will take place April 3-4 in Albuquerque, NM. The meeting will feature project briefings and panel discussions, and will be immediately followed by the annual DuraSpace Summit on April 4-5. The state of DuraSpace will be presented highlighting 2016 successes, ideas for new strategic directions, and open source project updates. In addition to the opportunity for small and large group discussions, each project will hold their own meeting, as organized by the respective Project Steering Groups, to discuss projects' goals, objectives, and resources for 2017.
ILIDE
The annual Innovative Library in Digital Era conference will take place April 3-5 in Jasná, Slovakia. The aim of the conference is to present visionary and original ideas based on the extensive experience of the participating experts and institutions. This year's agenda will feature a number of sessions on research data management, including a presentation on stewarding research data with Fedora by David Wilcox.
RDA 9th Plenary Meeting
The 9th RDA Plenary Meeting will take place April 5-7 in Barcelona, Spain. The plenary will feature interest and working group sessions on a number of topics related to repositories and Fedora, including the Research Data Repository Interoperability working group, and the Libraries for Research Data, Long Tail of Research Data, and Repository Platforms for Research Data interest groups.
Hydra Camp
The next Hydra Camp will take place April 17-20 at Emory University in Atlanta, GA. Led by Data Curation Experts, Hydra Camp is open to all developers interested in building skills working with the Hydra technology framework. Please register in advance to attend.
Museums and the Web
Museums and the Web will be hosted in Cleveland, OH from April 19-22. The conference features advanced research and exemplary applications of digital practice for cultural, natural and scientific heritage. This year's conference includes a workshop on Hydra-in-a-box for museums led by David Wilcox and Stefano Cossu. Workshop seats are limited so please register in advance.
Previous Events
Hydra Regional Meeting
The West Coast Hydra Regional Meeting took place on February 10, 2017 at McHenry Library at UC Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz, CA. The agenda and shared notes from the sessions are now available.
Mid West Fedora User Group Meeting
The second Midwest Fedora User Group meeting took take place February 28th to March 1st at the Art Institute of Chicago. The meeting featured discussions and presentations from regional Fedora community members, along with a workshop on Fedora, API-X, and content modelling. Notes from the meeting are now available.
IDCC
The 12th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC) was held in Edinburgh from February 20-23, 2017 bringing together digital curation professionals and educators with data producers and consumers to consider digital curation in a multi-disciplinary context. David Wilcox, Fedora product manager for DuraSpace, offered a full-day Fedora workshop, “Curating Digital Content with Fedora,” on Thursday, February 23. Workshop materials are available on the wiki.