Welcome to 2021! This is the January issue of the Fedora Newsletter. In this issue we want to  recap the accomplishments and activities of 2020 and provide updates on the latest developments within our community. We’ve also included links to some further reading for your interest.

News

Fedora 6 Alpha Releases and the Road to Beta

The last two months of 2020 were an exciting time as the team released Fedora 6.0.0-Alpha 1 and 6.0.0-Alpha 2. Downloading and testing is underway and the team is encouraging community members to provide feedback on the most current release.

Features Available in Fedora 6.0.0-Alpha:


  1. Alpha Migration Tooling for Fedora 3, 4 & 5 to Fedora 6
  2. Native Amazon S3 Support for Oxford Common File Layout persistence
  3. Built-in simple search service
  4. Support for collecting performance metrics
  5. Docker deployment option
  6. HTML UI for Search
  7. Side Loading



With the Alpha Release complete and updated, the team is now focused on addressing criteria required for Beta Release. The expectation for the Beta Release is that the core software and migration tooling be feature-complete. 

Please mark your calendars for participation in a Beta-testing period coming soon!

IMLS Grant Update: Fedora Migration Paths and Tools

This grant (lg-246264-ols-20) is focused on developing, piloting, and documenting migration tools and paths for upgrading Fedora 3 repositories to Fedora 6. Fedora staff and the grant partners have been working hard on this project and are pleased to share the following updates:

  1. The University of Virginia pilot team has completed an initial migration of their Fedora 3 content using migration-utils. The next step is to index this content in their new Fedora 6 instance for further testing and configuration.
  2. The LYRASIS team is working on a validation tool that will independently validate a Fedora 3 to 6 migration. This tool will be used to validate that the University of Virginia migration has been completed successfully and all data has been migrated without loss.
  3. The Whitman College team is setting up a new Islandora 8 instance using ISLE and a new theme being developed by Born Digital. Once this instance has been set up the team will begin sample migrations based on previously established mapping decisions.


Stay tuned for future updates!

Quarterly Leadership Meeting

The final Quarterly Leadership Meeting took place virtually on December 11, 2020. Full meeting notes can be found here. The following topics were addressed:

  1. Financial update
  2. Fedora 6 Alpha 1 Release and the plan for Beta Release
  3. IMLS Grant update
  4. Discussion surrounding information acquisition for Fedora installations worldwide to gain a broader understanding of where Fedora is being used.

Communications 

Demo Videos:

Starting in October, we began posting new demo videos to our YouTube channel. With the Fedora 6 Production Release on the horizon, it is our goal to keep the community engaged and informed about what features to expect in Fedora 6. Stay tuned monthly for new videos.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel here.

Blog:

In September the Fedora team began work on the IMLS Grant (lg-246264-ols-20) and each month Fedora Program Leader David Wilcox has been keeping the community informed on the their progress. You can find his most recent update here.

Festive Fedora Frenzy!

In December we launched a fun trivia activity to bring a little smile to everyone before the holidays. We had a great response and accumulated over 350 ballot entries to select our winner. We are happy to announce that Scott Prater from the University of Wisconsin, Madison was our winner! Thanks to all who participated.

Activities in Related Communities - December

Islandora

  • ISLE 1.5.3 was released for ISLE, Drupal and Islandora 7.x. Full release notes can be found here.
  • ICG metadata and migration hack/doc will take place on January 13-14 and will focus on metadata and migration out of Islandora 7. 
    • The goal is to create useful documentation for community users migrating out of Islandora 7x.

Samvera

  • The Samvera wiki was migrated to a full standalone confluence wiki site this month.
    • Invitations to edit the new wiki were sent to registered email addresses
    • Contact Heather Greer Klein for more information

Oxford Common File Layout

  • Community meeting took place on Dec 9, 2020
  • Next community meeting:
    • Wednesday, January  13, 2021 at 11:00:00 am EST  UTC-5 hours 

Coming Up Next…

Stay tuned this month for the following:

  • Monthly IMLS Grant Update Blog Post - follow along with David Wilcox as he brings you up to speed on the team’s progress.
  • Monthly Demo Video - what feature will we showcase next? What features would you like to see? 
  • Email me at arran.griffith@gmail.com with your ideas for our next demo video.

Fedora User Group Meetings

With the new year under way and Fedora 6 Beta nearly complete, we are working toward hosting virtual User Group Meetings in the early spring. In an effort to cater to our community group members, we are hoping to host 2 separate meetings in different time zones in an attempt to provide an opportunity to better serve the entire community. Stay tuned for content submission guidelines in the coming weeks.

Conferences & Events

In an effort to consolidate conference information for all community members, we have created an active Conferences section on the wiki which can be accessed at any time here. Our goal is to keep this as up-to-date as possible to provide a single source of information surrounding on-going conferences and workshops.

Upcoming Conferences

Designing for Digital - February 22-25, 2021 (Virtual)

  • Designing for Digital brings together UX professionals, web designers, managers, researchers, strategists, and librarians of all types to examine the current users experience of the library and design the future of libraries in a modern, digital world.
  • All conference info can be found here.

Membership

Fedora is funded entirely through the contributions of members that allocate their annual funding to Fedora. This funding supports full-time staff to work on Fedora and provide technical leadership, direct strategic planning, organize community outreach, and coordinate timely software releases. Membership also provides opportunities to participate in project governance and influence the direction of the software. If your institution is not yet a member in support of Fedora, please join us today!

Register Your Repository

Is your repository listed in the registry? Help us maintain reliable information on the community of Fedora users around the world by registering your repository today. You can also request an update to an existing entry by selecting your entry and filling out the online form. 

Get Involved

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.

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