Changes and conversations ahead for the GeoBlacklight community
Karen Majewicz
Dear GeoBlacklight community,
I have a few big updates to share with you. Thank you for taking a moment to read through them!
1. A new tech stack is in development for the BTAA Geoportal
After extensive discussion and planning, the BTAA Geoportal is moving in a new technical direction. Over the next year, we plan to replace our GeoBlacklight geoportal with a more modular system using a headless architecture design. This means separating the back-end metadata store from the front-end user interface, allowing us to build a more flexible and sustainable platform. The new stack will include a metadata API and a lightweight discovery app built with a modern JavaScript framework.
Although we are migrating away from using GeoBlacklight as our core application, we do still plan to use and contribute to some of its JavaScript components. We will be less active in direct GeoBlacklight development, but we hope to remain closely connected to this community.
If anyone has questions or would like to talk more about our plans and how we might continue to collaborate, Eric & I would be happy to set up a time to chat on Zoom.
2. Leadership transition for the GeoBlacklight community
After our upcoming meeting on May 14, I will be stepping down as the GeoBlacklight Community Coordinator. I have had the privilege of hosting our monthly meetings since 2017, and now feels like the right time to pass the torch! I am so grateful for the conversations, collaborations, and shared work that have shaped this community over the years.
3. Growing a broader, geospatial library community
Looking ahead, many of us have been talking about creating a broader, more inclusive geospatial library community. These conversations have come up in recent GeoBlacklight meetings, at Stanford’s recent Colocate2 event, and in smaller breakout groups. This could turn into an ongoing organization that coordinates multiple communities around GeoBlacklight, Allmaps, OpenGeoMetadata, OpenIndexMaps, and more. We don’t yet know how this will shake out, but I look forward to seeing where we go next.
We will talk more about this at the May 14th GeoBlacklight meeting, and continue the discussion at Geo4LibCamp later this month. Please consider joining us!
Best regards,
Karen