Samvera Community Newsletter March 2026
Heather Greer Klein
In this issue:
Call for Proposals for Samvera Virtual Connect
Community-Funded Bulkrax Sprints: Improving the Bulk Import Experience for Hyrax and Hyku
Join the next Samvera Community Sprint, March 23rd - 27th, 2026
Highlight treasures from your collections 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 – Community-Funded Bulkrax Sprints: Improving the Bulk Import Experience for Hyrax and Hyku
The Community-Funded Bulkrax sprints have proceeded on schedule, with the Notch8 team providing weekly demos and feedback sessions in the Samvera Slack. Funding was secured and work has been completed for phase 1 and half of phase 2. Several institutions are pursuing approval for additional contributions to complete phase 2 work in March.
See notes from the March Samvera Partners Call for the most recent update. The work is expected to be included in a new Bulkrax release and in Hyku 7.1.
Thank you to Amigos Library Services and The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Libraries for their contributions, and to the institutions who are currently pursuing additional funding!
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. This includes the most complex work proposed, such as value-level validation and controlled vocabulary checks, and would require significant 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.
3– Join the next Samvera Community Sprint, March 23rd - 27th, 2026
Join the Community Sprint Event from March 23rd to 27th, 2026
You're invited to join the Samvera Community Sprint this March! This virtual sprint brings volunteers together to enhance code and documentation.
Whether you're a developer, metadata specialist, repository administrator, or in any other role, there will be a way for you to contribute. This is a great way to get to know the Samvera Community or to deepen your understanding of community-led development.
Sign up for the March Community Sprint
This sprint will focus on accessibility and IIIF issues. The Avalon, Hyrax, and Hyku product owners will share more information in their interest group calls and continue to update the sprint board.
The sprint is also a great time to work on existing documentation issues, with support from others in the community to answer questions and provide reviews.
Whether you can join for a day or the full week, your participation makes a difference!
4 – Highlight treasures from your collections 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.
5 – All Working and Interest Group calls for the month of March
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
Avalon User Roundtable - next meeting is Monday, March 16th at 1PM ET/10AM PT – Add the Avalon User Roundtable meetings to your calendar
Documentation Interest Group - next meeting is Tuesday, March 17th at 2:30PM ET/11:30AM PT – Add the Documentation Interest Group meetings to your calendar
Outreach & Engagement Working Group - next meeting is Wednesday, March 18th at 12PM ET/9AM PT – Add the Outreach & Engagement Working Group meetings to your calendar
Samvera Metadata Interest Group - the next meeting is Tuesday, March 24th at 2PM ET/11AM PT – Add the Metadata Interest Group meetings to your calendar
Hyku Interest Group - the next meeting is Thursday, March 26th at 11:30AM ET/8:30AM PT – Add the Hyku Interest Group meetings to your calendar
Repository Management Interest Group 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
Monthly Samvera Partners call - all staff of Samvera Partner institutions 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
6 – In case you missed it: other news from the Samvera Community email list
Call for participation in the User Experience working group, part of DLF Assessment Interest Group
Call for participation in the Metadata Working Group, part of DLF Assessment Interest Group
Save the dates: OR2026 online and OR2027 in Salvador, Brazil
Registration Now Open: 2026 IIIF Annual Conference & Showcase
Apereo Open Letter to Higher Education: Join Us in the Open Renaissance Movement