This is the October 2016 edition of the Fedora Newsletter. This newsletter summarizes the most significant activities within the Fedora community over the last month.

Fedora Camp in NYC

Fedora Camp in NYC [1], hosted by Columbia University Libraries, will be offered at Columbia University’s Butler Library in New York City November 28-30, 2016. Training will begin with the basics and build toward more advanced concepts–no prior Fedora 4 experience is required. Participants can expect to come away with a deep dive Fedora 4 learning experience coupled with multiple opportunities for applying hands-on techniques working with experienced trainers and Fedora gurus. 

Register today [2] and join us in New York!

Call for Action

Fedora is designed, built, used, and supported by the community. An easy and important way that you can contribute to the effort is by helping resolve outstanding bugs. If you have an interest in gaining a better understanding of the Fedora code base, or a specific interest in any of these bugs [3], please add a comment to a ticket and we can work together to move your interest forward.

Membership

Fedora is funded entirely through the contributions of DuraSpace members that allocate their annual funding to Fedora. The 2016 membership campaign has so far raised $522,250 from 67 members. The annual goal this year is $580,000, so we are over 90% of the way there. We will continue to coordinate with members of the Fedora Leadership Group to expand the pool of DuraSpace members supporting the Fedora project and build a sustainable funding base for the future. If your institution is not yet a member of DuraSpace in support of Fedora, please join us [4]!

Software development 

4.7.0 Release Candidate

The Fedora 4.7.0 release candidate is now available for testing [5]. This release upgrades versions of the underlying persistence application, which will require a straightforward backend data migration. If you have an existing Fedora 4 repository, you are requested to test backing up your existing repository, followed by restoring it into an installation of the 4.7.0 release candidate repository. See RESTful HTTP API - Backup and Restore [6] for more details.

Standards

Fedora API Specification

The Fedora community is working to establish a clearly defined specification for the core Fedora services [7]. This specification will detail the exact services and interactions required for a server implementation to be verified as "doing Fedora". 

You are invited to comment on and contribute to the draft specifications [8].

Community-driven Activity

Import/Export Tooling

One of the design goals of Fedora is to simplify the process of both getting your resources into and out of Fedora in a standardized way. This enables the reuse of Fedora resources in other contexts, such as exporting to a separate preservation system, as well as provides a pathway for migrating across Fedora installations, such as migrating from a LevelDB backend to PostgreSQL. Half of the problem is solved with the existing GET/POST interactions for RDF and non-RDF resources provided by the Linked Data Platform API. The other half should be addressed by tooling external to Fedora. In addition to the basic import/export of simple RDF and non-RDF resources, there is also significant community interest in supporting import/export of BagIt bags.
The work has been broken into phases - phase 1 priorities [9] have been addressed in the first sprint, and they are now ready for testing [10]. Meetings for phase 2 are now being scheduled [11] - stay tuned to the mailing list for updates on this initiative, and join in to contribute use cases, development effort, and testing.

API Extension Architecture 

API-X stakeholders met on September 15 [12] to discuss progress and plan activities for the next few months. An API-X milestone/demo is planned for early October to demonstrate the functionality that has been developed so far. 

If you are interested in the API Extension Architecture, please join the discussion on the fedora-community mailing list [13] and attend the next meeting.

Performance and Scalability

The Performance and Scalability group met on September 26 to review progress so far. The group agreed that test results should be aggregated and summarized, including summaries of improvements between different runs of the same test. The team would also like to develop an automated system for performance testing.

If you are interested in Performance and Scalability, please join the discussion on the fedora-community mailing list [14] and attend the next meeting [15] on October 24.

Conferences and events

Upcoming Events

Hydra Connect

Hydra Connect [16] will take place October 3-6 in Boston, MA. It is a chance for Hydra Project participants to gather in one place at one time, with an emphasis on synchronizing efforts, technical development, plans, and community links. The meeting program is aimed at existing users, managers and developers and at new folks who may be just "kicking the tires" on Hydra and who want to know more.

iPRES

The 13th International Conference on Digital Preservation (iPRES) [17] will take place in Bern, Switzerland from October 3-6, 2016. iPRES is the longest standing digital preservation conference in the world. This important event brings together key theorists, researchers and practitioners to explore the latest trends, innovations, policies and practices in digital preservation. An introductory Fedora 4 tutorial [18] will be offered on October 6, and a Fedora User Group Meeting [19] will take place on October 7. Please register in advance for the tutorial and user group meeting.

Islandora Camp Missouri

Islandora Camp [20] will be visiting Kansas City, MO this Fall. October 12 - 14. The camp will be held at the University of Missouri-Kansas City for three days and will include Islandora sessions, workshops, and community presentations. Register online [21] to attend the camp.

DLF

The 2016 DLF Forum [22] will be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, November 7-9, 2016. Digital Preservation 2016 [23] will be held in conjunction with the Forum, from November 9-10. An Introduction to Fedora 4 workshop [24] will be offered on November 8, along with a project update [25] on November 7.

Previous Events

TPDL

The 20th International Conference on Theory and Practice of Digital Libraries [26] took place in Hannover, Germany September 5-9. TPDL constitutes a leading scientific forum on digital libraries that brings together researchers, developers, content providers and users in the field of digital libraries. The conference featured an introductory, hands-on tutorial on Fedora 4 [27] delivered by David Wilcox, the Fedora Product Manager.

DC Area Fedora User Group Meeting

The DC Area Fedora User Group Meeting [28] took place on September 22-23 at the USDA National Agricultural Library. The first day of the meeting consisted of community presentations demonstrating exciting Fedora 4 developments from the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University. The second day was split across discussions around object and metadata modeling as it relates to Fedora 3 to 4 migrations and hands-on exploration of the new Import/Export utility.

Penn State Import/Export Sprint

The week of September 19 - 23, a group of 16 developers from various institutions got together in State College to work on on three initiatives with the goal to provide desired functionality back to the community. The import/export team started working on a BagIt implementation design including Bag Profile support for APTrust and MetaArchive. Their work included reviewing and updating documentation, and squashing bugs related to importing Fedora resources from the filesystem to prepare for an initial round of stakeholder feedback.

References

[1]  https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/Events/Fedora+Camp+NYC+-+28-30+November+2016
[2]  http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07ecup3dqg1c82f3d5&llr=5iy95gcab
[3]  https://jira.duraspace.org/issues/?filter=13122
[4]  http://www.duraspace.org/become_a_member
[5]  https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/Release+Testing+-+4.7.0
[6]  https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FEDORA4x/RESTful+HTTP+API+-+Backup+and+Restore
[7]  https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FEDORAAPI/Fedora+Specification
[8]  https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FEDORAAPI/Specification+Draft
[9]  https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/Design+-+Import+-+Export
[10] https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/fedora-community/_f5sT0Z0UVI
[11] https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/fedora-community/FEUmoVKX5BQ
[12] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/2016-09-15+Fedora+API+Extensions+Meeting
[13] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/fedora-community
[14] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/fedora-community
[15] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/2016-10-24+Performance+-+Scale+meeting
[16] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/hydra/Hydra+Connect+2016
[17] http://www.ipres2016.ch/
[18] http://www.ipres2016.ch/frontend/index.php?page_id=2833
[19] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/Events/Bern+Fedora+User+Group+Meeting%3A+7+October+2016
[20] http://islandora.ca/camps/mo2016
[21] http://islandora.ca/camps/mo2016/registration
[22] https://www.diglib.org/forums/2016forum/
[23] http://ndsa.diglib.org/meetings/
[24] https://www.conftool.pro/dlf2016/index.php?page=browseSessions&form_session=36&presentations=show
[25] https://www.conftool.pro/dlf2016/index.php?page=browseSessions&form_session=21&presentations=show
[26] http://www.tpdl2016.org/
[27] http://www.tpdl2016.org/tutorials
[28] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/Events/Washington+D.C.+Area+Fedora+User+Group+Meeting%3A+22-23+September+2016
 
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