Samvera Community Newsletter April 2026
Heather Greer Klein
In this issue:
Call for Proposals for Samvera Virtual Connect Open Through April 17th
Announcing Hyku 7.0
Join the Repository Management Interest Group call Monday 4/6 to discuss upgrade processes; local submissions workflows
Community-Funded Bulkrax Sprints: Phase 2 funded and work in progress; Phase 3 work 1/3 funded
Reminder: Submit a treasure in your collections to feature in the Samvera Community Repository Tour
In case you missed it: other news from the Samvera Community email list
1 – Call for Proposals for Samvera Virtual Connect
Samvera Virtual Connect will take place Tuesday, May 12 and Wednesday, May 13, 2026, from 8:00–11:00 AM PDT / 11:00 AM–2:00 PM EDT / 15:00–18:00 UTC.
Virtual Connect is a free, informal online event where community members share work, ideas, and experiences with Samvera and open repository technologies. The event takes place entirely on Zoom, and presentations will be recorded for asynchronous viewing.
Each year, feedback from attendees asks for more presentations highlighting real repositories, collections, challenges, and tools from the people who build and manage them. We need your participation to make this event representative of the breadth of work happening in and around our repositories, and to show the impact of this work.
We welcome and encourage anyone including repository managers, developers, metadata specialists, and project leads to share their work. No matter your role, there are others who could learn from your experiences.
We are currently seeking proposals for the following session types:
Repository Showcase (5–7 minutes)
Short “show and tell” demonstrations of repositories in production or development. Whether you’re running a Samvera-based repository, using tools like ServerlessIIIF, or experimenting with new approaches, we’d love to see what you’ve built.
Presentations (5, 10, or 20 minutes)
We welcome proposals on a wide range of topics across the Samvera ecosystem and open repositories generally. Possible themes include:
Work to support accessibility and inclusive access to collections
“New to Samvera” implementation experiences
Adapting or reusing work from other institutions
Challenges, lessons learned, or pilot projects
Integrations with other institutional systems or tools
Team workflows, staffing models, and collaboration practices
New ideas, experiments, or projects seeking feedback
Breakout Sessions (45 minutes)
Facilitated virtual roundtables scheduled before or after the main sessions. These discussions provide an opportunity to connect with others across the community around shared interests or challenges.
Proposal deadline: Friday, April 17, 2026
Virtual Connect is a welcoming space for sharing work in progress, practical experiences, and lessons learned, and we encourage submissions from across the community.
We hope you’ll share what your team has been building!
2 – Announcing Hyku 7.0
The Hyku community is proud to announce the release of Hyku 7.0. This milestone represents the continued collaboration of developers, institutions, and service providers across the Samvera ecosystem.
Hyku is a multi-tenant repository platform built on Hyrax that enables institutions and consortia to manage digital collections at scale. With each release, the community continues to strengthen the platform's flexibility, administrative tooling, and operational stability.
Hyku 7.0 builds on that foundation with improvements that make it easier to adapt metadata models, manage repository configuration, and maintain production environments.
What's New in Hyku 7
Flexible Metadata: Hyku 7 takes support for flexible metadata out of preview and improves and stabilizes the work found in Hyku 6.2. This support for flexible metadata is enabled through Hyrax's dynamic metadata framework. This capability allows repository administrators to configure metadata fields with greater flexibility and evolve metadata models without extensive code changes.
Flexible metadata can be enabled through the HYRAX_FLEXIBLE environment variable and provides a foundation for repositories to adapt their metadata schemas over time.
Ingest and Import Improvements: Hyku 7 introduces dynamically generated importer templates for Bulkrax. CSV templates are generated from active M3 profiles, custom mappings, and work types, which cuts manual setup and simplifies ingest for administrators.
Accessibility Improvements: Hyku 7 includes updates aligned with WCAG 2.1, including stronger ARIA labeling, improved keyboard navigation for complex UI, and better default-theme color contrast so repository content is easier to use for more people.
Ecosystem Upgrades: Hyku 7 aligns the platform with updated components across the Samvera ecosystem, including Hyrax, the underlying Rails framework, and related integrations such as Bulkrax, WillowSword, and hyrax-doi.
These updates help ensure compatibility with the latest community developments, availability of security patches, and maintain a healthy ecosystem of interoperable tools.
Administrative Improvements
Hyku 7.0 reflects contributions from developers, maintainers, and institutions across the Hyku and Samvera communities. The release represents ongoing collaboration to advance open, community-driven digital repository infrastructure.
Special thanks to everyone who helped to build and test Hyku 7 and especially to the following community members for their leadership and coordination of this release:
Rob Kaufman, community-supported Technical Coordinator for Hyku and Hyrax
Nic Don Stanton-Roark, community-supported Product Owner for Hyku
West Virginia University Libraries Staff
See the full announcement on samvera.org for additional details about why this release matters for current and potential Hyku implementers. Full release notes, upgrade guidance, and technical details are available in the Hyku GitHub repository.
3 – Join the Repository Management Interest Group call Monday 4/6 to discuss upgrade processes; local submissions workflows
Everyone is welcome to attend the next Repository Management Interest Group call on Monday, April 6th at 3PM ET/12PM PT. The group discusses all aspects of repository management, and questions are encouraged. Current agenda topics include:
Question about how people experienced upgrading recently - is anyone on the most recent versions?
Of the folks who use Samvera for an institutional repository, who are you allowing to submit works? Have you noticed a slowing down in response time based on an increased number of groups and/or users in the repository?
4 – Community-Funded Bulkrax Sprints: Phase 2 funded and work in progress; Phase 3 work 1/3 funded
The Community-Funded Bulkrax sprints have proceeded on schedule, with the Notch8 team providing weekly demos and feedback sessions in the Samvera Slack. Funding of Phase 2 is complete, and the for the second part of Phase 2 is currently underway. The work is expected to be included in a new Bulkrax release and in Hyku 7.1.
A big thank you to Phase 2 funders Amigos Library Services; The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Libraries; Indiana University; and University at Buffalo Libraries for their contributions, and to the institutions who are currently pursuing additional funding for Phase 3!
Phase 3 of the work as outlined could be completed in the second half of 2026 if the $31,000 required can be contributed by community institutions. Thanks to funding from Indiana University and Oregon State University, we are nearly 1/3 of the way to the goal total for Phase 3. This Phase includes the most complex work proposed including value-level validation and controlled vocabulary checks, and would require lots of community feedback throughout the development process. Several institutions are exploring options to fund this work with contributions beginning in June.
If you’re interested in supporting this important Bulkrax development work, please email hea...@samvera.org.
5 – Reminder: Submit a treasure in your collections to feature in the Samvera Community Repository Tour
The Outreach and Engagement Working Group is revamping our Samvera Community Repository tour on the samvera.org website, and we need your contributions! The tour offers an easy and fun way to see the diversity of collections and institutions who use Samvera technologies to power their repositories.
Please complete this brief form to share one particularly fun/interesting/notable holding in your repository so we can feature it on the tour.
6 – All Working and Interest Group calls for the month of April
See all Samvera Community calls, meetings, and events on the Samvera Public Calendar
Weekly Samvera Tech call - all are welcome to the weekly call on Wednesdays at 12PM ET/9AM PT to share local technical work, discuss any and all technical issues from all versions of software, documentation requests, and open pull requests. Add the weekly Samvera Tech call to your calendar
Repository Management Interest Group - next meeting is Monday, April 6th at 3PM ET/12PM PT – each month’s meeting is scheduled by a vote in the #repository-management channel on Slack.
Hyrax Interest Group - next meeting is Wednesday, April 8th at 11:30AM ET/8:30AM PT – Add the Hyrax Interest Group meetings to your calendar
Outreach & Engagement Working Group - next meeting is Wednesday, April 15th at 12PM ET/9AM PT – Add the Outreach & Engagement Working Group meetings to your calendar
Avalon User Roundtable - next meeting is Monday, April 20th at 1PM ET/10AM PT – Add the Avalon User Roundtable meetings to your calendar
Documentation Interest Group - next meeting is Tuesday, April 21st at 2:30PM ET/11:30AM PT – Add the Documentation Interest Group meetings to your calendar
Samvera Metadata Interest Group - the next meeting is Tuesday, April 28th at 2PM ET/11AM PT – Add the Metadata Interest Group meetings to your calendar
Hyku Interest Group - the next meeting is Thursday, April 30th at 11:30AM ET/8:30AM PT – Add the Hyku Interest Group meetings to your calendar
Monthly Samvera Partners call - all staff of Samvera Partner institutions, or those interested in becoming Partners, are welcome to join the monthly call for discussion, demos, updates, and information about Samvera governance. Add the monthly Partner call to your calendar
Chat with Heather Greer Klein, the Samvera Community Manager, by scheduling time during Community Manager Office Hours