Samvera Community Newsletter, November 2025

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Heather Greer Klein

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Nov 10, 2025, 2:37:30 PMNov 10

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In this issue:

Watch videos and view slides from Samvera Connect Online 2025
Join the Community Sprint December 1st - 5th
Welcome our newest Samvera Partner, Christine Peterson Consulting
Congratulations to LaRita Robinson, the 2025 Julie Allinson Award Recipient
Samvera Community Weekly Orientation/Q&A Time - Tuesdays, Thursdays, or schedule your own
Sustaining Hyku partnership with Invest in Open Infrastructure
Open Repositories 2026 Online Conference Call for Proposals
Working and Interest Group calls for the month of November
In case you missed it: other news from the Samvera Community email list

1 – Watch videos and view slides from Samvera Connect Online 2025

Thank you to anyone who attended or presented at Samvera Connect 2025 Online! We had 130 attendees over three days of presentations, with excellent questions and discussions.

Videos of all sessions and shared slides can be found on the Samvera wiki. There is also a YouTube playlist for the event.

2 – Join the Community Sprint December 1st - 5th

If you’re ready to try out code or documentation contributions, sign up to join the December 1 - 5 Community Sprint.

The sprint will include easy first issues in Hyrax, and a workshop on December 1st to help anyone getting started with Docker. You can see the sprint board now which will continue to be updated as the date approaches.

If you’re interested in helping with documentation, there will be volunteers working on documentation from the Documentation Interest Group issue board throughout the week. We need volunteers from all kinds of backgrounds to help make sure this documentation is providing what the community needs, both for development and for repository setup and management.

3 – Welcome our newest Samvera Partner, Christine Peterson Consulting

The Samvera Board is excited to announce Christine Peterson Consulting as our newest Samvera Service Provider Partner! You can read the full welcome blog post on samvera.org.

Christine has been a familiar face in the Hyku community through her work with another Samvera Partner, Amigos Library Services, where she served as Project Manager for the Amigos Hyku initiative. Now that she is leading her independent practice, we're thrilled she is supporting Samvera through Partnership and continuing her valuable work in our community.

4 – Congratulations to LaRita Robinson, the 2025 Julie Allinson Award Recipient

On behalf of the Selection Committee, it is my great pleasure to announce that the recipient of the 2025 Julie Allinson Award is LaRita Robinson, Senior Software Engineer at Notch8. LaRita was nominated by Hyku Tech Lead Rob Kaufman, Shana Moore from Notch8, and Nick Steinwachs from Notch8.

Rob's nomination included,“LaRita is one of the community members who is willing to work on the least fun, least glamorous parts of the code. She continually tries to ensure the pieces she touches work for everyone and not just to solve the current problem. Her efforts in the community are often quiet, but can be critical to ensuring that the platforms Samvera support work properly day in and day out.”

Nick’s nomination shared that “LaRita has so much grit and determination, working to fix the most confusing, old parts of code for the greater community benefit. She has worked tirelessly to bring complex, long-term migrations into Hyku over the finish line.”

Shana pointed out how LaRita's “dedication, warmth, and impact embody the spirit of the Julie Allinson Award”:

“LaRita plays a key role in the Samvera x Notch8 office hours, creating a welcoming space for community members to ask questions, share ideas, and navigate challenges. LaRita is generous with her time and knowledge, and she genuinely enjoys solving the hard problems that others might avoid, bringing clarity and progress to complex issues. Most of all, LaRita loves what she does. She chooses to stay rooted in the Samvera ecosystem not out of obligation, but out of genuine passion for the work and the community.”

Congratulations LaRita, and thank you for your outstanding and continuing contributions to the Samvera Community!

5 – Samvera Community Weekly Orientation/Q&A Time - Tuesdays, Thursdays, or schedule your own

Join the Samvera Community Manager to ask questions, get oriented to the Samvera Community, learn how to connect with other Hyku, Hyrax, or Avalon Media System users.

If you hit a roadblock or you aren't sure where to get started, start here!

Join the Zoom call most Tuesdays at 10AM ET and Thursdays at 3PM ET - see the Samvera Community Calendar

Or, schedule a time that works best for you!

Community orientation and how to get started participating in the community
To share or request feedback or ideas
To get more information about Samvera or Samvera platforms and tools
To find others in the community with similar implementations
To learn more about Samvera Partnership

Heather will be happy to answer questions or point you in the right direction for help with anything related to the Samvera Community or platforms.

6 – Sustaining Hyku partnership with Invest in Open Infrastructure

The Grant Steering Committee is excited to share a significant update on the Sustaining Hyku grant project. We are partnering with Invest in Open Infrastructure (IOI) to develop an innovative co-investment and decision-making model that will strengthen Hyku’s long-term sustainability and community-driven approach.

Learn more in the news release: PALNI and PALCI partner with IOI to build Hyku co-investment and decision-making model

Team members presented an overview of this work in a Samvera Connect session, Sustaining Hyku: Building Shared Capacity and Infrastructure for the Future.

7 – Open Repositories 2026 Online Conference Call for Proposals

The 21st International Conference on Open Repositories (OR2026) will be held online June 8-11, 2026.

The theme for the OR2026 conference is: Open to All? Repositories at the Intersection of People, Practice, and Emerging Technologies

Exploring how repositories sustain open knowledge exchange while advancing FAIR principles, preservation, community building, and responding to the challenges and opportunities of emerging technologies.

Our last online conference, OR2021, was held with “Open for All” as the theme. As we look back over the past five years, what has changed in the broader landscape of repositories? What new challenges are open repositories facing? How are repositories responding and addressing these challenges, and what opportunities are they embracing? As we embark on a fully online conference in 2026, we ask, are open repositories Open to All?

We particularly welcome proposals aligned to the overall theme, but also on other administrative, organizational, or practical topics related to open digital repositories. We are interested in the following sub-themes:

Sustaining open knowledge exchange: How do we balance commitments to openness with long-term resilience and sustainability through our practices and partnerships?
FAIR principles: How are we ensuring that repository content is Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reuseable and how are we addressing the ability of machines to automatically find and use digital assets?
Preservation: How are financial and resource impacts addressed in our work to ensure that repositories and their digital content are preserved into the future?
Community building: How do we strengthen and continue to build an open community of practice?
Responding to challenges and opportunities of emerging technologies: New technologies have the potential to offer both opportunities and challenges to repositories and scholarly communication infrastructure. How are we taking advantage of opportunities and mitigating potential threats?

Submission categories include workshops, panels, roundtable discussions, presentations, and pre-recorded lightning talks.

Please visit the Call for Proposals page to learn more about the submission categories including a full list of submission templates that can be downloaded, recording and dissemination information for accepted proposals, and key dates. Note that all submissions must be made in ConfTool, our conference management tool.

The deadline for submissions is January 11, 2026.

Please note: This is a firm deadline for submissions and there will not be an extension.

We are thrilled about the opportunities an online conference provides and only plan to charge a small registration fee to attendees from “high income” countries to cover the online platform costs. Registration for all other attendees will be free.

Program Co-Chairs:

Joseph Kraus, Colorado School of Mines

Ianthe Sutherland, University of Edinburgh

Paul Walk, Antleaf Ltd.

Maureen P. Walsh, The Ohio State University Libraries