Community-Funded Bulkrax Sprints: Improving the Bulk Import Experience for Hyrax and Hyku

[Heather Greer Klein]

Hello all,

I wanted to share a great opportunity to maximize community co-investment in Bulkrax: some planned work as part of the Sustaining Hyku grant has created an option for community-funded sprints to quickly make massive usability improvements to Bulkrax, making bulk import much easier for both Hyrax and Hyku.

Bulk import is the primary pathway for adding collections to Hyrax and Hyku repositories at scale. The component that handles this function, Bulkrax, is shared across both platforms. Whether migrating legacy collections, ingesting faculty research, or processing large donations, the ability to efficiently load content determines how quickly a repository delivers value to its institution and users.

The current Bulkrax experience in Hyrax and Hyku is a barrier to that value. The Hyku community has worked to define what Bulkrax requires to be easy to use, and Notch8 has already been contracted for this first phase, and can extend their sprints to quickly complete the additional phases if there is enough interest from Hyrax and Hyku institutions.

Hyku and Hyrax user communities are encouraged to pledge funds to Samvera so we can extend the contract through Phase 2 and Phase 3, completing all of the issues identified to make Bulkrax easy to use. If we can get pledged commitments to cover the remaining costs, the work can begin immediately.

See the full description on the Samvera Wiki including the costs for each phase.
There is also an Executive Summary/one-pager document for decision-makers.

Phase 1 is fully funded - Header validation, missing columns, typo suggestions

Phase 2 and 3 require funding from other institutions to unlock deeper validation capabilities and improved user experience:

• Phase 2 is already 1/3 of the way funded - Row-level validation, duplicate detection, parent-child checks
• Phase 3 - Value-level validation, controlled vocabulary checks, date formats

This is a great opportunity for community co-investment to extend existing work and very quickly see major benefits for Hyrax and Hyku! 

Please let me know if you have questions. I can invoice institutions for pledges of any amount, and I can send them immediately or hold them to a date that works best for a given institution.

Heather

Community Manager Office Hours

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Heather Greer Klein (she/her/hers)

Community Manager

Samvera Foundation

hea...@samvera.org

https://samvera.org/

Working from Durham, NC (US Eastern Time Zone), on land traditionally cared for by the Shakori and Eno peoples.