Fedora Newsletter, October 2017
David Wilcox
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.
Membership
Fedora is funded entirely through the contributions of DuraSpace members that allocate their annual funding to Fedora. The 2016 membership campaign concluded with $564,750 in funding and 74 members. The 2017 membership campaign kicked off in May, and so far the Fedora project has raised $552,250 from 74 members. The annual goal this year is $580,000, so we are over 95% of the way there. We will continue to coordinate with members of the Fedora Leadership Group to expand the pool of DuraSpace members supporting the Fedora project and build a sustainable funding base for the future. If your institution is not yet a member of DuraSpace in support of Fedora, please join us!
Software development
Standards
Fedora API Specification
The initial public working draft of the Fedora API Specification is still available for broader public review.
As described in the specification charter, this specification is designed to:
- Define the characteristics and expectations of how clients interact with Fedora implementations
- Define such interactions such that an implementation’s conformance is testable
- Enable interoperability by striving to minimize the need for modifications to client applications in order to work with different implementations of the Fedora API specification
The initial working draft will remain open for public comment until November, at which time we are planning to graduate the specification to a “candidate recommendation”. Please contact the Fedora Community or Fedora Specification Editors with any general comments or if you would like to participate in implementation and/or test suite sprints. Any comments on details of the specification, itself, should be posted as GitHub issues.
Community-driven Activity
API Alignment Sprints
As the API specification effort progresses toward a full recommendation, the Fedora community has begun the work of bringing the current implementation in line with the specification. After two back-to-back codesprints led by Aaron Birkland of Johns Hopkins University and Andrew Woods of DuraSpace, the basic Create, Read, Update, and Delete functions have been brought into alignment and much progress has been made toward implementing Memento for versioning and refining the Web Access Control implementation for authorization. The remaining alignment tasks will be documented and scheduled out over the next few months.
We would like to thank the following individuals and their institutions for participating in the API alignment code sprints:
- Aaron Birkland, Johns Hopkins University
- Ben Pennell, University of Maryland
- Bethany Seeger, Amherst College
- Collin Brittle, Emory University
- Danny Bernstein, DuraSpace
- Danny Lamb, Islandora Foundation
- Esmé Cowles, Princeton University
- Jared Whiklo, University of Manitoba
- Joe Harrington, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
- Joshua Westgard, University of Maryland
- Longshou Situ, University of California, San Diego
- Mohamed Mohideen Abdul Rasheed, University of Maryland
- Peter Eichman, University of Maryland
- Yinlin Chen, Virginia Tech
Oxford Common Filesystem
During the Fedora and Samvera camp in Oxford (4-8 September) there were a number of conversations about the role of file systems in institutional repositories, and specifically about the impact the storage layer has on institutional repository actions and interactions with other components of a larger institutional digital preservation programme.
Following the camp, with feedback from Neil Jefferies and Andrew Woods, Andrew Hankinson put together some of these thoughts into a small proposal: the "Oxford Common Filesystem Layout" (OCFL). Similar to the "Portland Common Data Model," this proposal can serve to start conversations about the underlying data storage layer in our institutional repositories and arrive at some common understanding of best-practices for filesystem storage. The first version of the proposal can be found on the mailing list - please join in to continue the discussion.
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 .
Previous Events
PASIG
The Preservation and Archiving Special Interest Group meeting took place September 11-13 at Oxford University. Erin Tripp, DuraSpace Business Development Manager, attended and presented on DuraCloud and Fedora. She wrote a report on the meeting which can be found on the DuraSpace website.
PHYDO Developer Event
As a part of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grant to Indiana University and WGBH to extend the HydraDAM digital asset management system to operate over Fedora 4 as well as provide richer support for preservation workflows related to audio and visual objects, Indiana University hosted a developer event from September 11-13. The event, attended by Fedora, Samvera and Avalon representatives, developed a working model for managing and serving content that may be hosted on systems external to Fedora, such as hierarchical storage management systems, offline tape or AWS infrastructure.
RDA 10th Plenary Meeting
The 10th Research Data Alliance Plenary Meeting took place September 19-21 in Montreal, Quebec. The meeting featured several group discussions relevant to Fedora, including the Research Data Repository Interoperability working group and the Repository Platforms for Research Data interest group. David Wilcox, Fedora Product Manager, attended and presented on Fedora, Samvera, and Islandora in the context of data repositories. The Fedora Import/Export Utility was also featured in discussions on repository interoperability with regard to BagIt packages.
iPRES
The 14th International Conference on Digital Preservation took place September 25-29 in Kyoto, Japan. David Wilcox attended to present on Fedora and Data Migrations and to lead a Fedora workshop. The conference provided many opportunities to learn about institutional digital preservation practices, particularly in East and Southeast Asia. There were notable commonalities with the work of the Research Data Alliance as well, as evidenced by the keynote presentation on FAIR Data in Trustworthy Data Repositories by Ingrid Dillo.
Upcoming Events
Fedora Camp Texas
Fedora Camp Texas, co-hosted by Texas Digital Library and the University of Texas Libraries, will be offered at the University of Texas at Austin's Perry-Castañeda Library in Austin October 16-18, 2017. Training will begin with the basics and build toward more advanced concepts–no prior Fedora experience is required. Participants can expect to come away with a deep dive Fedora learning experience coupled with multiple opportunities for applying hands-on techniques working with experienced trainers and Fedora gurus.
This is your last chance so please register today and join us in Austin!
DLF
The annual DLF Forum takes place October 22-26 in Pittsburgh, PA. The Forum includes digital library practitioners from member institutions and the broader community, for whom it serves as a meeting place, marketplace, and congress. This year's Forum will feature a Fedora workshop and project update, along with a presentation on Fedora's role in a digital preservation strategy at the co-located NDSA Digital Preservation 2017.
Samvera Connect
Samvera Connect is a chance for Samvera Project participants to gather in one place at one time, with an emphasis on synchronizing efforts, technical development, plans, and community links. The meeting program is aimed at existing users, managers and developers and at new folks who may be just "kicking the tires" on Samvera and who want to know more. This year's conference will feature a variety of workshops, presentations, panels, lightning talks, unconference sessions, and working/interest group meetings. Please register in advance to attend!