Samvera Community Newsletter May 2022 -- Virtual Connect recordings
Heather Greer Klein
In this issue:
Samvera Virtual Connect 2022 presentation recordings, attendee survey
Call for Samvera Connect 2022 Workshop proposals – Deadline June 1
Bulkrax Interest Group call for participants
Samvera no longer requires Contributor License Agreements from individuals or organizations
In case you missed it - news round-up and job postings
1 – Samvera Virtual Connect 2022 recordings, attendee survey
Thank you to everyone who helped make Samvera Virtual Connect 2022 a huge success! You can watch a playlist of Virtual Connect presentations on YouTube, and view slides and video links on the program page.
If you attended the conference please take a moment to fill out the attendee survey by Friday, May 13th.
2 – Call for Samvera Connect 2022 Workshop proposals
The Program Committee for Samvera Connect 2022 invites proposals for in-person workshops. The conference will be held at University of Notre Dame October 24-27. This year workshops will be held after the plenary conference sessions, with scheduling available in the afternoon on Wednesday, October 26th and in the morning on Thursday, October 27th.
Workshops can be proposed for 90 minutes, 3 hours, or 6 hours (two 3 hour sessions, one each day). This is the first of our CFPs because we like to have our workshop list complete before registration opens in early June. The CFPs for presentations and panels, posters, and lightning talks will be available soon.
You can propose a workshop that you would like to run yourself or with colleagues through the submission form. The form requires:
the workshop title
the name(s) of the presenters
email address of main presenter
length of workshop (1.5 hrs, 3hrs, 6hrs)
the target audience (Developers, UI/UX, Administrators, System Admins/DevOps, Metadata Managers, Repository Librarians, Newcomers, other)
the expected learning outcomes for the participants
a description (no more than 200 words or so) for the conference program
any technology that participants will need to provide
the maximum number of participants for the workshop
Submission form: https://forms.gle/kRtSsmaftKPuyVNf7
Please submit your workshop proposal by June 1st, 2022. Notifications should be expected in the first week of June.
3 – Bulkrax Interest Group Charter
Bulkrax devs and Product Owner Braydon Justice are looking to engage the community around continued Bulkrax development. Though developed by Software Services by Scientist.com (formerly Notch8) and enhanced over several of our projects, we're happy to see broader instances of community adoption of this import/export tool. The goal of establishing an interest group is to formally get Bulkrax outside of our own team, create a larger conversation around development, and ensure the tool progresses in a way to meet community needs.
The establishment of this interest group will require the participation of members from at least two other organizations. If you're willing to add your name to the charter for the Bulkrax Interest Group, please add your name to the charter on the wiki or contact Kevin Kochanski on slack or at kevinko...@scientist.com.
Here is our formal statement of Scope and Objectives:
Under continuous development for several years, Bulkrax is increasingly being adopted by Samvera users as a standard community tool for bulk import and export of repository content. While Software Services by Scientist.com (Braydon Justice) is product owner of Bulkrax, the goal of this interest group is to formalize the involvement of other community partners as adoption increases. The intention is to make development progress on current defined deliverables around the release of 3.0, resolve some open bugs, establish best practices, and add additional functionality to the gem. A byproduct of a regular meeting around Bulkrax in the community will be to align requirements and other conversation around Bulkrax among the increasing user pool, as well as expand long-term involvement so that Scientist.com are not the only maintainers in the future.
4 – Samvera no longer requires Contributor License Agreements from individuals or organizations
The Samvera Board unanimously passed a proposal to eliminate the requirement that all code contributors to Samvera technologies, and their organizations, file a signed Contributor License Agreement (CLA). I presented this proposal after consulting with Samvera volunteer developers, Product Owners, Partners, other open source communities, and the legal counsel for our fiscal sponsor OASIS Open.
Pursuing this proposal revealed that while these agreements were important in the first decade of the project, a number of changes mean that they are no longer as necessary as they once were. Eliminating a process that was often a barrier to new contributors and community participation is in alignment with Samvera's vision of a welcoming, vibrant, and global community with contributions from many participants in many roles.
What does this change mean for you?
If you would like to contribute to Samvera technologies, you can simply make a pull request.
If you approve pull requests, you no longer need to check that the contributor has a CLA on file.
Thanks to everyone who contributed their thoughts to this proposal and especially to Danny Bernstein at LYRASIS whose initial research was invaluable.
6 – In case you missed it - news round-up
Job posting: Head, Digital Media Software Development at Indiana University (reposted)
Draft Strategic Vision for U.S Repositories Open for Community Consultation