This is the June 2017 edition of the Fedora Newsletter. This newsletter summarizes the most significant activities within the Fedora community over the last month.

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, please add a comment to a ticket and we can work together to move your interest forward.

Fedora and Samvera Camp UK

DuraSpace and Data Curation Experts are pleased to invite you to attend the Fedora and Samvera (formerly Hydra) Camp at Oxford University, Sept 4 - 8, 2017. The camp will be hosted by Oxford University and is supported by Jisc. Previous Fedora Camps include the inaugural camp held at Duke University, the West Coast camp at CalTech, and the most recent, NYC camp held at Columbia University. Hydra Camps have been held throughout the US and in the UK and the Republic of Ireland.  Most recently, DCE hosted the inaugural Advanced Hydra Camp focusing on advanced Hydra developer skills.  

Registration is limited to the first 40 applicants so register here soon! An early bird discount is available until July 10.

Fedora Camp Texas

We are pleased to announce that Fedora Camp Texas, co-hosted by Texas Digital Library and the University of Texas Libraries, will be offered at the University of Texas at Austin's Perry-Castañeda Library in Austin October 16-18, 2017. Training will begin with the basics and build toward more advanced concepts–no prior Fedora experience is required. Participants can expect to come away with a deep dive Fedora learning experience coupled with multiple opportunities for applying hands-on techniques working with experienced trainers and Fedora gurus. 

Register today and join us in Austin! An early bird rate is available and attendance is limited to the first 40 registrants. Local accommodations are available at a reduced rate.

Software development 

Standards

Fedora API Specification

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

A charter for the specification effort has been published, and an editorial team has been established. The team members include:

  • Ben Armintor, Columbia University
  • Esmé Cowles, Princeton University
  • Danny Lamb, Islandora Foundation
  • Simeon Warner, Cornell University
  • Andrew Woods, DuraSpace

The draft specification has been published and is looking for community comments. Following this round of input, we plan on an initial public working draft of the specification later this month.

Community-driven Activity

Fedora 4 in Production

Deploying Fedora 4, or Migrating from Fedora 3 to Fedora 4 is a challenge with built-in rewards. This series of articles, “Fedora 4 in Production” looks into why and how community members are working with Fedora 4 to enhance both collections and workflow at their institutions. In this first article Dan Coughlin, IT Manager, Digital Scholarship and Repository Development, Penn State Libraries, describes Fedora 4 in production at Penn State ScholarSphere.

Fedora Contributor Profiles

The Fedora project relies on many individuals and institutions to ensure the project's success. We are grateful for their commitment and will showcase their contributions in a series of community profiles aimed at recognizing our contributors’ achievements, and introducing them to the rest of the community. The third article in the series features Nick Ruest from York University, a long-time contributor to the Fedora and Islandora projects. His focus is on Fedora development as it relates to web archiving issues. The full article can be found on the DuraSpace website.

The second article in the Fedora Repository Contributor Profile series features Bethany Seeger from Amherst College Library, who has been a contributor to the Fedora repository team for two years. Her focus is on MODS XML to RDF mapping as Amherst College Library migrates to Fedora 4. The full article can be found on the DuraSpace website.

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. This design goal is being met by an external Import/Export tool that supports transacting in RDF and (optionally) BagIt bags.

We have just completed the fourth sprint for the import/export utility, which now supports a broader range of scenarios including:

  • Lossless import/export of Fedora resources and all other resources associated by user-provided predicates as outbound relationships (e.g. pcdm:hasMember) or inbound relationships (e.g. pcdm:memberOf)
  • Export of Fedora versions
  • Export from a Fedora deployed on a given host/port followed by import into another Fedora on a different host/port

Additionally, the related Import/Export Verification tool which is designed to provide assurance that exports from or imports to Fedora were complete and successful is approaching its next milestone release.

A new release of the import/export utility including these improvements will be available soon. If you would like to participate as developer, tester, or to write documentation, please contact Andrew Woods.

API-X

The Fedora workshop at Open Repositories on June 27 will include a section on the API Extension Architecture. Seats are still available, so please register in advance if you would like to attend.

If you would like to participate in the API-X effort, please attend the next meeting on June 8.

Conferences and events

In an attempt to simplify the task of keeping up with Fedora-related meetings and events, a Fedora calendar is available to the community as HTML  and iCal .

ELAG

ELAG (European Library Automation Group) Conference is Europe’s premier conference on the application, development and implementation of information technology in libraries and documentation centers. This year's conference will feature a Fedora bootcamp led by David Wilcox, Fedora Product Manager. Please register in advance to attend the bootcamp.

Islandora Camp EU

After skipping a year in 2016, Islandora Camp is returning to the EU June 13 - 15, 2017, hosted by Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Registration will be limited to 40, so please register in advance.

Open Repositories

The annual Open Repositories Conference brings together users and developers of open digital repository platforms from higher education, government, galleries, libraries, archives and museums. The University of Queensland (UQ), Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and Griffith University will host the conference 26-30 June 2017 at the Hilton Brisbane. This year's conference will feature workshops, panels, and presentations from members of the Fedora, Hydra, and Islandora communities. Please register in advance to attend.

VIVO Conference

The annual VIVO conference brings together users, managers and developers from around the world to share the latest developments in semantic web academic profiles. Whether an experienced user, or just starting out, this is the event to attend. This year's conference will feature a workshop on Fedora and a session on integrating VIVO with Fedora. Spaces are limited so please register in advance!

  • No labels

All content on the LYRASIS Wiki is licensed under the CC BY (Attribution) license, unless otherwise noted.