From the LYRASIS Content and Scholarly Communication Initiatives Team

LYRASIS announces the release of a new study, Understanding the Landscape of Library Accessibility for Online Materials. The study was undertaken in an effort to map the landscape of accessibility policies and practices for online resources as managed by libraries and archives across the United States. The study can be accessed on the LYRASIS website at https://www.lyrasis.org/technology/Pages/Accessibility-Survey-Report.aspx.

Authored by Hannah Rosen, LYRASIS Scholarly Communication Specialist and Digitization Program Coordinator, and Jill Grogg, Strategist for the Content and Scholarly Communication Initiatives team, the study is based on a survey conducted in early 2019 as a mechanism to better understand how (primarily academic) libraries within the United States are handling accessibility for their online content, and more specifically, where they stand in terms of policy and implementation.

Key findings of the study include:

• Libraries are the most progressive in terms of accessibility when they maintain the most control over their content.
• National policies and community technical guidelines on accessibility hold more prominence than local or institutional mandates.
• Most accessibility training is self-initiated; more infrastructure is needed to train librarians in accessibility mandates and tools.

Celeste Feather, Senior Director of Content and Scholarly Communication Initiatives at LYRASIS says of the report, “This study is an important piece of the work LYRASIS is doing to understand the needs of collections holding institutions across the country, and helps unite libraries in their efforts to make materials more accessible to their users and communities. Our goal is to leverage the reach we have at LYRASIS, with more than 1000 members, to help build conversations around these vital topics and use our research abilities to inform the wider community about these important trends and best practices.

The report and all survey materials, including original survey questions and anonymized responses are accessible on the LYRASIS webpage. Visithttps://www.lyrasis.org/technology/Pages/Accessibility-Survey-Report.aspxx for more information.

The post LYRASIS 2019 Accessibility Report Now Available appeared first on Duraspace.org.

Atlanta, GA – July 11, 2019  To help guide and steward the recent merger of LYRASIS and DuraSpace – four new Board of Trustees Members were elected by the combined memberships, and four new Board of Trustees were appointed. This brings LYRASIS’ FY 2020 Board to 13 members, seven elected and six appointed.

DuraSpace brings 175 members and 3 Community Supported Programs to LYRASIS’ 1,000 members and 7 Community Supported Programs. As of July 1st, 2019, the Board will work with the operations team on strategies to increase the value for these 10 programs along with accelerating the impact of the $1.2 million investment the Board approved for new product development and innovation.

Joe Lucia, the current LYRASIS Chair, says, “This powerful Board brings the right vision and experience to LYRASIS at a time of great opportunity. It will be an exciting year!”

Robert Miller, CEO of LYRASIS, says, “Working together with the LYRASIS and DuraSpace Board members throughout the merger discussions clearly showed the potential that this new organization can deliver to the combined memberships. We are thrilled with what FY 2020 will bring for our members.”

Member State Library Agencies or Group Agents:

• Kathleen Moeller-Peiffer – Deputy State Librarian for Library Support Services at the New Jersey State Library
• Wolfram Horstmann – Director of the Göttingen State and University Library and University Librarian of the University of Göttingen (Germany)

Member Academic Library:

• Alexia Hudson-Ward – Azariah Smith Root Director of Libraries for Oberlin College and Conservatory

Member Special Library:

• Lee Ceperich – Director of the Margaret R. and Robert M. Freeman Library at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts

• Heather Joseph – SPARC, Executive Director
• Kaitlin Thaney – Endowment Director for Wikimedia Foundation
• Tyler Walters – Dean of University Libraries, Virginia Tech
• Evviva Weinraub – Vice Provost for University Libraries, University at Buffalo

• Joe Lucia – Board Chair, Dean of Libraries, Temple University – Paley Library
• Gina Millsap – Vice-Chair; Chief Executive Officer, Topeka & Shawnee County Public Library
• Derick Dreher, Ph.D. – Treasurer; The John C. Haas Director, Rosenbach Museum and Library; VP of Special Collections, The Free Library of Philadelphia
• Kate Pugh – Faculty, Columbia University
• Kevin Guthrie – President, ITHAKA

LYRASIS

• Elizabeth Gail McClenney – Immediate Past Chair; Director, Roanoke College – Fintel Library
• Rob Spindler – former Secretary; Head of Archives & Special Collections, Arizona State University Libraries
• Tom Rosko – Institute Archivist, Head Institute Archives and Special Collections, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries
• Gregor Trinkaus-Randall – Preservation Specialist, Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners
• Cory Nimer – University Archivist, Brigham Young University, Harold B. Lee Library
• Julie Walker – State Librarian of Georgia, Georgia Public Library Services
• Eric Miller – CFO, Atlanta University Center – Robert Woodruff Library

DuraSpace 

• Tom Cramer – former Vice President; Chief Technology Strategist and Associate Director of Digital Library Systems & Services at Stanford University
• Rob Cartolano – former Treasurer; Vice President for Technology and Preservation for Columbia University Libraries
• Dan Cohen – Vice Provost for Information Collaboration; Dean of the Libraries; and Professor of History at Northeastern University
• Mike Conlon – Emeritus Faculty member of the University of Florida\

• Laura Wood – Associate University Librarian for Research and Education at Harvard Library

The post LYRASIS Announces New Board of Trustees Members appeared first on Duraspace.org.

Congratulations to the new Leadership Group  The VIVO Leadership has been formed for the coming year.

The Leadership Group (LG) is the “board” of VIVO – the LG sets strategic direction, appoints the LG chair and the Steering Group, and develops and approves the MOU with LYRASIS and the project budget. After member and community elections, the project has a new Leadership group.  See  VIVO Leadership Group

Continuing members include: Julia Trimmer, Duke University, Ann Beynon, Clarivate, Mike Conlon, University of Florida, Federico Ferrario, Cineca, Robert Cartolano, Columbia University, Tom Cramer, Stanford University, Hannah Sommers, George Washington University, Anna Guillaumet, Sigma, Doug Hahn, Texas A&M University, Ginny Pannabecker, Virginia Tech University, Alex Viggio, University of Colorado, Violeta Ilik, Columbia University, Christian Hauschke, TIB Hannover, and Terrie Wheeler of Weill Cornell Medicine.

The new LG member is Steven McCauley, Brown University.  Welcome Steven!

And a special thanks to LG/SG members whose terms are ending this year: Paul Albert, Weill Cornell Medicine, Mark Newton, Columbia University, Joe Zucca of the University of Pennsylvania, and Jean Rainwater of Brown University.

Thank you all for your service to a truly open and innovative open project in support of scholarship around the world!  We are looking forward to another outstanding year!

Early bird registration available for VIVO19  It’s not too late to be an early bird and save some money on registration for VIVO 19 in Podgorica Montenegro, September 4-6.

Second Early Bird Registration ends on July 29, 2019. Register at these rates by the deadline and save $50.  Register here: http://bit.ly/2FWcRRt

Second Early Bird Academic / Non-Profit / Govt – $250

Second Early Bird Industry / For-Profit – $300

Students – $99

Local Attendees – $50

Follow conference news on Twitter at @vivocollab hashtag #vivo19

Technical initiatives  VIVO currently has three technical initiatives in progress:

1. The Development Interest Group is working toward a release of VIVO 1.11.  The new release continues the separation of components, improves deployment options, and fixes bugs.
2. The VIVO Scholar Task Force is developing a new front end for VIVO based on Elasticsearch, React JavaScript library, and GraphQL.
3. The Ontology Interest Group is developing new ontology for VIVO, based on Basic Formal Ontology, expanding VIVO’s ability to represent scholarship and improving alignment with ontological best practices.

All initiatives are open for all to participate.  We look forward to seeing you involved in one or more of these efforts to improve VIVO.

Go VIVO!

Mike

Mike Conlon
VIVO Project Director

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CONTACT Meg McCroskey Blum, Director of Marketing & Communications, meg.blum@lyrasis.org, 800.999.8558 x2951, Skype: meg.lyrasis

LYRASIS and DuraSpace are pleased to announce the merger of their two leading 501 C3 not-for-profits was completed on July 1, 2019, Members will participate in developing new scalable technologies, shared innovation opportunities, and high value – fairly priced services across the global landscape of academic and public libraries, scholarly research, archives, museums, and galleries. 

LYRASIS will remain the parent organization and legal entity. It’s governance model will continue to be a Board that is 50% member elected 50% appointed. The merger will accelerate collaboration, development and implementation of platforms that will benefit our 1,700+ members.

Robert Miller, CEO of LYRASIS, says of the merger, “Our Boards, our memberships, and our teams are thrilled with this merger. In addition to the existing programs and services LYRASIS has for its members, this merger brings 3 respected community supported projects to the 7 programs that LYRASIS is organizationally invested in. We firmly believe that by having 10 such programs under one roof, the combined 1,700+ members and 5,000+ institutional users will see the benefits of scale, experience lower risk, see higher returns on innovation, and see an acceleration of implemented ideas. As part of this, LYRASIS is putting $1.2M of development monies into 5 key areas to support related to the merger.”

Joe Lucia, LYRASIS Board Chair says, “LYRASIS and DuraSpace are enterprises that each embody a rare combination of idealism and pragmatism for the ways they engage their professional communities in collaboration to support the scientific and cultural memory commitments of archives, libraries, and museums. This merger will establish LYRASIS as a clear leader in convening those communities around shared open source solutions to address their common challenges.” 

The DuraSpace brand, staff of DSpace, Fedora, and VIVO have transitioned to the new DuraSpace Community Supported Programs (DCSP) Division of LYRASIS. DuraSpace hosted services (DuraCloud, DSpaceDirect, and ArchivesDirect) will now be part of the LYRASIS Digital Technologies Division.

About LYRASIS

LYRASIS (www.lyrasis.org), is a 501(c)(3) non-profit membership organization whose mission is to support enduring access to the world’s shared academic, scientific and cultural heritage through leadership in open technologies, content services, digital solutions and collaboration with archives, libraries, museums and knowledge communities worldwide. LYRASIS organizational and staff values are: communication, respect, collaboration, impact, and service. 

The post LYRASIS and DuraSpace Complete Merger–Members and Community Benefit appeared first on Duraspace.org.

We just got back from Open Repositories 2019 . Thank you to all who came to attend our many presentations and visited our stand, enjoying the Lavazza coffee prepared by our staff to the cry of: “Our repositories are as good as our coffee!”

Conference poster deadline July 19  Did you miss a deadline to submit work to the conference?  It’s not too late to submit a poster.  Poster submission is open now at  https://forms.gle/xLGyGsdT58jJBmMc7 through July 19.  Posters can be on any topics related to VIVO – implementation, development, ontology, adoption, representation, data curation, persistent identifiers, and much more.  All our sites are doing interesting work.  Please consider submitting a poster for the conference.

Christian Hauschke on LG  Congratulations to Christian Hauschke of TIB, Hannover who was elected to represent the bronze members of the VIVO Project.  Each year, the bronze members elect a representative to serve on the VIVO Leadership Group.  Welcome Christian!

Becoming a member of the VIVO Project means your institution supports VIVO financially.  This support makes it possible for us to have a project, develop software, and make it available as open source to the community.  Please consider supporting the VIVO project as a member.  You can become a member here:  http://bit.ly/dura-join And if your institution is already a member, thank you!

Community nominations  Each year, the VIVO community elects three members of the community to serve on the VIVO Leadership Group.  Community members at member institutions nominate members of the community who are eager and able to serve to help develop and execute strategy for the project.  Anyone may be nominated.  Nominations are open through June 28 (this Friday).  See http://bit.ly/2ZKGhYt . Self nominations are welcome.

Freya PID graph The Freya Project is a large scale EU project to assemble identified data about scholarship.  They are building an open knowledge graph that they called a “PID graph” for persistent identifier (PID).  The VIVO community has significant experience with building knowledge graphs at the institutional level, curating and identifying data.  Learn more about Freya, and their approach here:  https://www.project-freya.eu/en/blogs/blogs/the-pid-graph

Go VIVO!

Mike

Mike Conlon
VIVO Project Director

The post VIVO Updates, June 23, 2019 — Conference poster deadline 7/19, Christian Hauschke on Leadership Group, Nominations for community members, Freya Project appeared first on Duraspace.org.

On August 22,2019 the State Archives Basel-Stadt and St. Gallen will host a Fedora Workshop with high-caliber speakers from Lyrasis/DuraSpace/Fedora: Product Manager David Wilcox and Technical Lead Andrew Wood will discuss Fedora 4 (currently 5.0.2) which replaces the Fedora 3.8 version currently running on many archives. Unlike Fedora 3.8 (XML and Relational Database), Fedora 4 builds on RDF and Triplestore.

This is a far-reaching change, presenting new opportunities that need to be examined in depth and discussed by the community to make sustainable use of them possible. Since many members of KOST use Fedora open source repository software, but the resources for building knowledge are scarce, a coordinated approach is appropriate.

The workshop will  be held in English .

Program

August 22

• 9:00 – 9:30
  Welcome, introductions, VM setup
  Presenter: All
• 9:30 – 10:30
  Introduction to Fedora: Resource Management, Versioning
• 10:30 – 11:00
  Break
• 11:00 – 12:00
  Introduction to Fedora: Authorization, Fixity, Messaging
• 12:00 – 13:00
  Lunch
• 13:00 – 14:30
  Introduction to the OCFL and Fedora 6.0
• 14:30 – 14:45
  Break
• 14:45 – 15:45
  Migrating to Fedora
• 15:45 – 16:00
  Break
• 16:00 – 16:30
  External Integrations
• 16:30 – 17:00
  Wrap-up and discussion
  Presenter: All

Registration

The number of participants is limited to 30 people.

The workshop will take place in the State Archives Bern, Falkenplatz 4, 3001 Bern.

Registration is required and will be open until August 16,.2019.

Please send your binding registration fee to markus.loch@bs.ch. The workshop fee (CHF 150) must be paid by August 16,.20199 to IBAN CH73 0900 0000 9000 0644 5, recipient: Staatsbuchhaltung, 9000 St. Gallen. Please note the payment message “KAKU 101210 / 3E.VS.039” and the name of the participant.

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DuraSpace’s Chief Financial Officer, Valorie Hollister, will be ending her 12-year tenure with DuraSpace this month. The transition marks a tenure of significant improvement in the financial transparency of the organization.

Since the early days at one of DuraSpace’s predecessor organizations, the DSpace Foundation, Ms. Hollister has shown leadership, versatility, and fiscal savviness. Focused on community building and outreach, she launched and led several community groups, organized user group meetings, played a key role in developing community project governance and elections. She also coordinated professional development offerings, like the DLF/CLIR E-Science Institute.

For the last 5 years, Ms. Hollister has been at the helm of DuraSpace’s financial strategy and management and a key business partner to both the DuraSpace Executive Director and DuraSpace Board of Directors. Tyler Walters, President of the DuraSpace Board of Directors and Dean of University Libraries at Virginia Tech, says, “As a direct result of Valorie’s effort and skill DuraSpace is in the strongest fiscal position in its history, with both the net income and cash flow improved significantly. She provided financial clarity and transparency to the Board of Directors and the broader community. I appreciate and highly value her versatility, dedication, and willingness to take on whatever the organization has needed over the years.”

In her tenure Ms. Hollister developed and managed $1.3M annual fundraising campaign with 198 members from around the world. She was also in charge of  the human resources and business management functions, ensuring the DuraSpace team and supporting infrastructure could operate at peak efficiency. Over the past year she led the fiscal and human resources due diligence work for the merger with LYRASIS. Erin Tripp, DuraSpace Executive Director, says “Valorie’s efforts provided the DuraSpace Board of Directors with a comprehensive review of key financial and human resource information. Her efforts were a critical component of the merger process, equipping the Board with in-depth analysis and lines of inquiry that were essential for our Board discussions and decisions.”

In parting Ms. Hollister says, “I have relished my years collaborating with an amazing team of colleagues, the DuraSpace members, the DuraSpace Board of Directors, and the broader user community. I look forward to seeing the DSpace, Fedora, and VIVO projects thrive in the newly combined organization at LYRASIS.”   

The DuraSpace team and Board of Directors extend their extend heartfelt thanks to Ms. Hollister for her leadership and wish her the best as she begins the next phase of her career.

The post Valorie Hollister: Leadership and Versatility Marked Tenure at DuraSpace appeared first on Duraspace.org.

We are thrilled to be planning our 4th annual Member Summit. This year’s in-person event will be at the Big 10 Conference Center in Chicago. Our theme this year is Local to Global. This  will be our first meeting after the LYRASIS + DuraSpace merger, and we will be welcoming DuraSpace Members and staff. The summit will include high level discussions for your senior and executive staff as well as the Leaders Circle pre-conference event.

The LYRASIS Member Summit is a members-only meeting for senior strategists and staff who are looking for new ways to collaborate and serve their users, researchers and communities. It is designed to help our members and their institutions seize both sustainable and disruptive innovations to deliver new, better, and tried and tested approaches for increasing and sustaining access to knowledge. The Member Summit creates a unique space for learning, networking, collaboration and designing action on the most important issues facing archives, libraries, museums and galleries today. As a LYRASIS member, you are invited to this annual conference at no charge.

Registration for both our Summit and hotel block will be open in the next few weeks! We hope to see you there!

The post SAVE THE DATE for the LYRASIS Member Summit Oct. 1 – 2 Chicago, Illinois appeared first on Duraspace.org.

Sprint coming up June 17-26  Interested in development?  Ready to sprint?  The VIVO developers will be holding a sprint June 17-26 to work on externalizing the search indexes of VIVO in support of VIVO Scholar and other applications.  Developer calls are held every Tuesday at 11 AM US Eastern Time.  See Development Interest Group for call agendas and sprint planning.

Open Repositories  VIVO community members will be attending Open Repositories at the University of Hamburg this week. We hope those attending have a chance to catch up, discuss VIVO, and how best to move forward.  https://or2019.blogs.uni-hamburg.de/

Three weeks to LYRASIS  As many of you know, Duraspace is merging with LYRASIS, another US non-profit, to improve support of community open source for academics.  The merger is expected to become official July 1, 2019.  LYRASIS and Duraspace staff have been diligently meeting, learning each other’s work, and preparing for becoming a single organization.

I have served as a board member of Duraspace since 2014 and participated in the decision to merge with LYRASIS.  I will not be a board member of the new organization.  You may hear of other changes – in personnel, and in business practices.  The VIVO Project remains autonomous.  It is governed by its Leadership Group.  Its relationship with LYRASIS is defined by the MOU VIVO has in place with Duraspace, which LYRASIS will honor.

Leadership Group Community elections coming up  Speaking of the Leadership Group, watch for an announcement of nominations for community members to serve on the Leadership Group.  This is an outstanding opportunity for motivated community leaders to step forward and join in the governance of the project.  There are fascinating, important, and perhaps challenging issues facing the Leadership Group this year.  We hope you will consider being nominated to serve!

Go VIVO!

Mike

Mike Conlon
VIVO Project Director

The post VIVO Updates, June 9, 2019 — Upcoming sprint, Open Repositories, LYRASIS, Leadership Group Elections coming up appeared first on Duraspace.org.

Are you traveling to Hamburg, Germany for the Open Repositories Conference (OR2019)? Please join your DuraSpace colleagues Tim Donohue, Michele Mennielli, Andrew Woods and David Wilcox for a reception celebrating open community, collaboration and innovation on Monday June 10 from 7-9 PM. Conference participants are welcome for light appetizers and drinks at The Pony Bar located within walking distance from the University of Hamburg at Allende-Platz 1, 20146 Hamburg, Germany (directions: https://goo.gl/maps/gDnVkvKr65PZAkeF7).

Please join us to celebrate what we have accomplished together and what we look forward to in the future. DuraSpace and Lyrasis announced that they would join their organizations earlier this year. They will complete the merger by July 1, 2019. Together they will create new models for collaboration, innovation and development in the landscape of academic, research, and public libraries, galleries, archives, and museums. The merged organization will leverage expertise, reach, and capacity to create and build new programs, services and technologies that enable durable, persistent access to data and services. The LYRASIS and DuraSpace communities will have a strong voice in the development and governance of programs, projects, and services that are already market leaders.

The post Invitation: Please Come to a DuraSpace Reception In Hamburg, Germany appeared first on Duraspace.org.

From Andrew Woods, on behalf of the Oxford Common File Layout (OCFL) editorial group

The Oxford Common File Layout (OCFL) specification describes an application-independent approach to the storage of digital information in a structured, transparent, and predictable manner. It is designed to promote standardized long-term object management practices within digital repositories.

Illustration by Sam Mitchell, Lyrasis

For those following the OCFL initiative or those generally interested in current community practice related to preservation persistence, you will be pleased to know that the OCFL 0.3 beta specification has been released and is now ready for your detailed review and feedback!
– https://ocfl.io/0.3/spec/

Twenty four issues [1] have been addressed since the 0.2 alpha release (February, 2019). Beyond editorial/clarifying updates, the more substantive changes in this beta release include:
– Flexibility of directory name within version directories for holding content payload [2]
– Optional “deposit” directory at top of Storage Root as draft workspace [3]
– Expectation of case sensitivity of file paths and file names [4]

Within the 90 day review period until September 2nd, please review the specification and implementation notes and provide your feedback either as discussion on the ocfl-community [5] mailing list or as GitHub issues [6].

The monthly OCFL community meetings [7] are open to all (second Wednesday of every month @11am ET). Please join the conversation, or simply keep your finger on OCFL’s pulse by lurking!

More detail and implementation notes can be found at https://ocfl.io.

[1] https://github.com/OCFL/spec/issues?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Aissue+closed%3A2019-02-18..2019-06-03+
[2] https://github.com/OCFL/spec/issues/341
[3] https://github.com/OCFL/spec/issues/320
[4] https://github.com/OCFL/spec/issues/285
[5] ocfl-co…@googlegroups.com
[6] https://github.com/ocfl/spec/issues
[7] https://github.com/OCFL/spec/wiki/Community-Meetings

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DSpace 7 Preview Release is available: 4Science is a major contributor to the creation of this new version, together with other contributors from the community.

4Science has been awarded for the implementation of the OpenAIRE-CRIS-CERIF Guidelines in DSpace-CRIS. The main objectives of this implementation are to:

• realize the implementation of the latest OpenAIRE Guidelines for CRIS Managers in DSpace-CRIS
• enable DSpace-CRIS platforms to expose research information to OpenAIRE.

This month, 4Science participated in the following events, with multiple roles, as speaker, partner, and sponsor:

• COAR 2019 Annual Meeting, May 21-23, Lyon (France)
• euroCRIS Membership Meeting Spring 2019, May 27-29, Helsinki (Finland)

Here’s where we’ll be next month:

• GARR conference 2019, June 4-6, Turin (Italy)
• Open Repositories 2019 (OR2019), June 10-13, Hamburg (Germany)
• OAI11, June 19-21, Geneva (Switzerland)

Let’s meet there and talk about FAIR Open Science!

https://www.4science.it/en/2019/05/22/4science-events-spring-summer-2019/

The post News from 4Science appeared first on Duraspace.org.

Conference reviews  This year, the VIVO Conference is breaking new ground.  As you likely know this is the 10th annual conference, and the first to be held in Europe.  VIVO has many strong members and partners and implementations in Europe and we thought it was about time to make it easier for our European community to attend.  The conference will be held at the Hilton Hotel in lovely Podgorica, Montenegro, well served by major airlines, train, and even cruise ships (well, you might need car to get from the coast).

Proposals for presentations at the conference have been receive and are currently under review.  For the first time, the VIVO Conference is using Open Review (http://openreview.net) Reviewers are assigned to the proposals as in traditional review, but all reviews are open, and reviewers other than the assigned reviewers can comment on proposals.

Comments and reviews are a great way to improve presentations.  As a commenter, you can suggest additional content, make presenters aware of related work, and ask questions.

Open Review is a great addition to the conference.  We hope you will participate – either as an assigned reviewer or as a commenter.  To see the proposals and comment on them, visit Open Review and select the VIVO Conference.

Conference registration  Speaking of the conference, why not go ahead and register here:  http://vivoconference.org

EuroCRIS membership meeting  This week, several VIVO people will be attending the EuroCRIS members meeting Helsinki.  See https://www.csc.fi/web/eurocris2019/  If you are attending, please let us know.  We hope to see you there!

Go VIVO!

Mike

Mike Conlon
VIVO Project Director

The post VIVO Updates for May 26, 2019 — Conference reviews, conference registration, EuroCRIS membership meeting appeared first on Duraspace.org.

The Fedora community has long been at the forefront of developing an open source repository framework that supports digital preservation efforts. Fedora 6 aims to integrate a standardized structure for persisting and delivering the essential characteristics of digital objects in Fedora with the emerging Oxford Common File Layout (OCFL) specification.  The OCFL defines a shared approach to file hierarchy for long-term preservation which describes an application-independent approach to the storage of digital information in a structured, transparent, and predictable manner. It is designed to promote long-term object management best practices within digital repositories.

Overview of Fedora 6 planned features:

• Replace current Modeshape back-end
• Implement the OCFL for persistence
• Add a native, synchronous query interface
• Improve performance and scale

Fedora 6 digital preservation enhancements are of interest to institutions because digital content stored with Fedora 6 will be transparently readable by both humans and machines, thereby making it accessible with or without Fedora. This application-agnostic approach to preservation is an essential characteristic of ensuring the persistence of digital data through time.

Johns Hopkins University (JHU) and Penn State have joined community efforts to support the development of Fedora 6 by increasing their Fedora membership contributions in 2019.  JHU is now a platinum member of DuraSpace in support of Fedora and Platinum member Penn State has contributed an additional $22,000 in support of Fedora for 2019.

Sayeed Choudhury, Associate Dean for Research Data Management; Hodson Director of the Digital Research and Curation Center, Johns Hopkins University, explains, “We are developing open infrastructure at Johns Hopkins including the Public Access Submission System or PASS (http://pass.jhu.edu/) and an updated data archive specifically designed for health sciences data. Additionally, we plan to migrate our digital collections from DSpace to Islandora 8. Our increased commitment to Fedora in terms of financial resources, software developers, and user feedback reflects its importance for each of these components of our evolving open infrastructure. Fedora 6’s increased support for preservation and migration are ideal next steps in terms of capabilities.”

The post Fedora 6: Application-independent Storage to Ensure the Persistence of Digital Data Through Time appeared first on Duraspace.org.

See a preview of the new DSpace 7 UI

The first preview release of DSpace 7 is now available for download, testing, and feedback. Demo sites are also available for a preview of DSpace 7 features.

DSpace 7 brings to DSpace a single, modern user interface and REST API and integrates current technological standards and best practices. This new UI combines with the existing core backend of DSpace 6, resulting in a lean, responsive, next-generation repository.

The preview release provides a first look at many of the new features that make DSpace 7 the largest development effort in the history of the software:

• New Angular UI that is modern, responsive, and built using a Bootstrap theme for easy customization.
• A completely redesigned REST API that is self-documenting and human browsable.
• Redesigned submissions and workflows featuring a one page submission process with a drag-and-drop interface, and automatic metadata extraction from common formats like PDFs.
• Configurable entities, an optional new item type inspired by the DSpace-CRIS project that allows for complex linked relationships between items. DSpace 7 will include the option to implement this feature for two use cases popular with the DSpace community:
  • Journal Hierarchy: create and link objects for a Journal, Volume, Issue, Article, and Author
  • Faculty & Organizational Units: a lightweight, CRIS-like option to represent Projects, Faculty, Department/Unit, Publication, etc.

Configurable entities help to better align DSpace with Next Generation Repository recommendations related to Identifiers as well as alignment with OpenAIRE v4.

DSpace 7 builds on DSpace 6 to create a modern and future-focused repository. The backend restructuring from DSpace 6 is retained and combined with the features above to create a powerful repository designed to address current user needs and plan for future standards.  

DSpace 7 is the first version of DSpace to be developed using test-driven development practices designed to identify and address issues earlier in the development process and lead to more stable releases. It is also the first release to use a working group model for decisions related to design and development.

Blog Post Translations

Translations of this announcement are available in several languages for distribution to DSpace user groups around the world.

We need your help!

If you’re interested in testing and providing feedback on this preview release and future releases of DSpace 7, you may wish to view the recent webinar “DSpace Docker for Repository Managers: Running Any Version of DSpace from your Desktop.”

Aside from testing, other areas where all contributions are welcome:

• Translating the DSpace user interface into your language
• Work on DSpace 7 documentation

Download the DSpace 7 Preview release

If you notice any bugs or issues with the Preview release, please report them immediately to our issue tracker: https://jira.duraspace.org/browse/DS

An enhanced Preview release is anticipated this summer, and the DSpace 7 Beta release and information about the DSpace 7 Testathon will be announced later this year. You can learn more at the DSpace 7 Release Status page.

A big thank you to the DSpace community for all the work that has led to this Preview release, particularly the DSpace 7 Working Group, Entities Working Group, DSpace Committers, and DSpace Leadership and Steering groups.

The post AVAILABLE NOW: DSpace 7 Preview Release appeared first on Duraspace.org.

Elections for Leadership Group  Each year, the VIVO Project holds elections as per its charter to name a new Leadership Group to begin July 1.  The Leadership selects it chair and vice chair, and names a Steering Group of its members.  The VIVO Leadership Group  sets the strategic direction for the project and is the primary governance group for the project.  The VIVO Steering Group assists the Leadership Group by preparing proposals and agendas and discussing operational issues as needed.

For more information on the elections see How are the VIVO Leadership and Steering Groups Formed?

Please consider serving on the VIVO Leadership Group!

Early bird conference registration deadline May 27  To get the lowest possible rate for registration at the VIVO conference, please register by the early bird deadline of May 27.  The conference will be held in Podgorica, Montenegro, September 4-6.  The organizers have received outstanding proposals and we expect to have a fabulous conference.  Your can register here:  http://bit.ly/2FWcRRt

The Local Organizing Committee has selected theHilton Hotelas our conference venue. You can also stay at the Hilton hotel where rates should be around 125 Euros per night. Alternatively, on-line sources such asbooking.comand similarweb-sitesoffer affordable luxury residential apartment accommodations located a short distance (3-5 blocks) from the conference center.

Knowledge Graph Conference Columbia University held its first 2019 Knowledge Graph Conference organized by the School of Professional Studies of Columbia University and chaired byFrançois Scharffe, May 7-8, 0219.  The conference brought together world experts to help people understand the benefits of knowledge graphs such as VIVO.  Juan Sequeda, who’s travel reports we have featured here before, was an invited speaker and produced another wonderful travel report of this important event.  Please see http://www.juansequeda.com/blog/2019/05/11/2019-knowledge-graph-conference-trip-report/

Books for VIVO  Every couple of months we post a suggestion for books to read related to VIVO.  This month we are recommending a classic on open source projects, Kurt Fogel’s Producing Open Source Software:  How to Run a Successful Free Software Project  The book is freely available on-line.  The chapters cover the main topics of an open source project such as VIVO.

Perhaps beach reading for your summer holiday/vacation.

Calls this week.  Looking to join a VIVO call?  All are welcome!  Call calendar is here:  http://bit.ly/vivo-calendar

Go VIVO!

Mike

Mike Conlon
VIVO Project Director

The post VIVO Updates, May 19, 2019 — Leadership Group elections, Early bird conference registration deadline, Knowledge Graph conference, Books for VIVO appeared first on Duraspace.org.

VIVO Conference proposals due this Wednesday, May 15.  The VIVO Conference call for proposals will be open through this Wednesday, May 15.  The conference will be held September 4-6, 2019 in Podgorica, Montenegro.  Proposals are very welcome for presentations, posters, panels, and workshops.  Proposals are welcome on all aspects of the open representation of scholarship, data regarding scholarship, and the use of that data to improve scholarship.  We hope to receive your proposal!

EuroCRIS  Several VIVO people are heading to the EuroCRIS 2019 meeting in Helsinki, Finland, May 27-29.  Please let us know if you are planning to attend.  We’re always eager to meet and chat about VIVO!

VIVO Scholar Update presentation.  From the vivo-community email list dated May 9:

Hi VIVO Community,

The VIVO Scholar Task Force is working on a new, lightweight, read-only front end for VIVO, based largely on the discovery and foundational work of the Product Evolution Task Force, which recently wrapped up.

Please join us for an open, town-hall style meeting on Thursday, May 16 at 11 eastern. Connection information is here: https://duraspace.zoom.us/j/952326581. We’ll fill you in on what we’re doing now and what we’re planning, so bring your questions about VIVO Scholar.

Future VIVO Scholar town hall meetings will be held roughly every 8 weeks at the same time: June 11, September 12, October 31, January 9, February 20

Hope to talk to you next week!
Julia

Julia Trimmer
Chair, VIVO Leadership and Steering Group

Director, Faculty Systems and Analysis
Duke University in Durham, NC
Explore Duke’s amazing faculty and researchers in Scholars@Duke.

OpenRefine presentation  Christian Hauschke of TIB Hannover will present on OpenRefine, a tool for cleaning data and transforming it for VIVO and other purposes.  TIB Hannover uses OpenRefine extensively.  The presentation will be this Thursday, May 16, 10 AM US Eastern Time during the Ontology Interest Group meeting.  Connection information is here:  https://duraspace.zoom.us/j/952326581

Internationalization  The Internationalization Task Force is starting up again to discuss requirements (see VIVO i18n task force – requirements) for the VIVO interface and build on work done by our international sites.  The group will meet on June 4 at 10 AM US Eastern Time.  Connect here:  https://uqam.zoom.us/j/5142161911

Calls this week  The VIVO Calendar has calls for the week.  Check it out!

Go VIVO!

Mike

Mike Conlon
VIVO Project Director

The post VIVO Updates, May 12, 2019 — Conference proposals due Wednesday, EuroCRIS, VIVO Scholar, OpenRefine, Internationalization appeared first on Duraspace.org.

The 2019 DSpace North American Users Group planning committee invites proposals for the upcoming meeting which will be held September 23 & 24, 2019 at the Elmer L. Andersen Library at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.

This meeting will provide opportunities to discuss ideas, strategies, best practices, use cases, and the future development of DSpace 7 with members of the DSpace community including repository developers, technology directors, and institutional repository managers.

We are looking for proposals to cover a variety of topics including, but not limited to:

• DSpace 7 development and integration
• Upgrading or migrating to DSpace
• Accessibility
• DSpace for research data
• DSpace for cultural heritage
• Analytics and assessment
• Institutional repositories / scholarly communication issues
• “Show and Tell” – share your success and challenges
• Anything else you would like to share with the community!

We are seeking proposals in the following formats:

• Lightning Talk (5-10 min) – a brief, freestanding presentation, with or without slides, including Q&A
• Presentation (20 min) – a more comprehensive, freestanding presentation, including Q&A
• Discussion Panel (45 min) – a collection of brief presentations on a topic or area, including a moderated Q&A or open discussion
• Workshop – an instructor-led workshop on a topic or tool
• Birds-of-a-feather – breakout sessions for attendees to engage in a particular topic

Submit a proposal by June 21, 2019.

Notifications of acceptance will be sent by July 15, 2019.

Need some ideas? Check out past North American user group meeting programs on the conference wiki!

Questions? Contact us at dspace-user-group-meeting@umn.edu.

The 2019 DSpace North American User Group Meeting is jointly sponsored by the University of Minnesota Libraries and the Texas Digital Library.

We encourage members of the wider open repository community and those interested in learning more about the open source DSpace repository platform to participate. More information about accommodations, registration, and schedule will be made available on the conference website.

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The VIVO Calendar  The VIVO Calendar is a simple Google Calendar, available on the home page of the VIVO wiki.  You can add this calendar to your collection so that are up to date on all VIVO meetings and events.  Have an update of question about the calendar?  Post to one of the VIVO email lists.  Thanks!

Conference call for proposals closed May 15  The VIVO Conference call for proposals has been extended to May 15.  We look forward to your proposal for a workshop, poster, panel, or presentation.  Topics at the VIVO conference include everything having to do with representing and using data about scholarship, including, but not limited to software development, implementation, change management, ontology development, persistent identifiers, national adoption, analytics, data wrangling, and anything else you might think of related to the open world of metadata regarding scholarship and research.  The conference will be held September 4-6, 2019 in Podgorica, Montenegro.  We hope to see you there!

An ontology project  For sometime, the VIVO ontology has needed to improve – VIVO needs to cover more of the world of scholarship, and represent new expectations in scholarship.  VIVO needs to take advantage of advances in ontological design and practice that have emerged since the ontology was first created in 2007 and last revised in 2013.  Revising the ontology will be a significant effort – a new ontology which builds on all that has been learned needs to be developed; 2) testing, tools, and training will be needed to help the community adopt the new ontology; and 3) the VIVO software, and existing software using the current ontology will need to be upgraded using the tools and training.  The effort is expected to take several years, and involve the entire VIVO community.  The current VIVO ontology is expected to be supported indefinitely.

A one page summary of the effort, the approach to the work and some consequences can be found here:  VIVO Ontology Version 2 in one page

A short white paper is available here: VIVO Ontology Version 2

Multiple presentations at the conference will present concepts regarding the effort and how all can participate.

The Ontology Interest Group meets every other Thursday to discuss the effort, solicit, input, review early thoughts, and determine direction.  All are welcome!

We look forward to the participation of the VIVO community in this effort.  Over the coming months, we will have a series of short surveys regarding needs in the community for representation.  We hope you can take a few minutes to review these surveys with your VIVO group and answer as a group to provide let us know how to make the VIVO ontology more relevant, more consistent, and more open.

ROR  Looking for data regarding research organizations?  You might want to take a look at the Research Organization Registry (http://ror.org)  Following on the work of Digital Science and GRID (http://grid.ac) and a collaboration between 17 organizations including ORCiD, THOR, and CrossRef, ROR is an independent, non-profit effort to curate an open registry of the world’s research organizations.

Go VIVO!

Mike

Mike Conlon
VIVO Project Director

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