This is the October 2018 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.
Membership
Fedora is funded entirely through the contributions of DuraSpace members that allocate their annual funding to Fedora. We began our annual membership campaign with a goal of raising $570,000, and so far we have raised $503,167 which is over 88% of our goal! This funding pays for staff to work on the project and provide technical leadership, direct strategic planning, organize community outreach, and coordinate timely software releases. Membership also provides opportunities to participate in project governance and influence the direction of the software. If your institution is not yet a member of DuraSpace in support of Fedora, please join us today!
New Members
We would like to welcome the University of Graz, Centre for Information Modelling as our newest DuraSpace member in support of Fedora! We appreciate their generous contribution to DuraSpace and Fedora. Information on membership levels and benefits can be found on the DuraSpace website.
Upgrades
We would like to thank the National Library of Medicine for upgrading their membership from Gold to Platinum this year! NLM is a longstanding member of the Fedora community and we are thrilled that they were able to increase their contribution level.
Designing a Migration Path Grant Update
The Designing a Migration Path grant work kicked off this month with an initial meeting of the advisory group:
- Mark Jordan, Chair of Islandora Foundation Board of Directors & Head of Library Systems, Simon Fraser University
- Mike Giarlo, Member of Samvera Steering Committee & Software Engineer & Architect, Stanford University
- Sayeed Choudhury, Associate Dean for Research Data Management, Johns Hopkins University
- Este Pope, Head of Digital Programs, Amherst College
- Scott Prater, Digital Library Analyst, University of Wisconsin-Madison
- Tim Shearer, Associate University Librarian for Digital Strategies and IT, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- Andrew Weidner, Digital Operations Coordinator & Bridge2Hyku Project Manager, University of Houston Libraries
Along with the project team at DuraSpace, the group discussed the project plan, schedule of completion, and logistics. An in-person meeting will be held following the CNI Fall Membership Meeting in December. Keep an eye on this newsletter for monthly updates on our progress.
Fedora and Samvera Camp in Berlin
DuraSpace and Data Curation Experts invite you to attend Fedora and Samvera Camp at the Berlin State Library November 5 – 8, 2018. Training will begin with the basics and build toward more advanced concepts – no prior Fedora or Samvera experience is required. Participants can expect to come away with a deep dive Fedora and Samvera learning experience coupled with multiple opportunities for applying hands-on techniques working with experienced trainers from both communities.
Attendance is limited to the first 30 registrants. DuraSpace Members and Registered Service Providers receive a discounted rate.
Software development
Standards
Fedora API Specification
The second Candidate Recommendation of the Fedora API Specification is still available for public review.
This release should be considered stable in so far as the only potential revisions will come from the feedback of implementers of the Candidate Recommendation.
Minimum requirements for releasing the 1.0 Recommendation include:
- Specification compliance test suite
- Two or more implementations of the specification
- No unresolved, outstanding critical issues, as defined by the specification editors
Please contact the Fedora Community or Fedora Specification Editors with any general comments. Any comments on details of the specification, itself, should be posted as GitHub issues.
Community-driven Activity
Tech Report: On the Road to 5.0
As part of the completion of the Fedora API specification, the current implementation will need to be brought into alignment with the documented specification. We are now in the midst of the second code sprint to complete this work, and the technical team has written a brief report on the progress so far.
In the course of the first two-week sprint we closed 32 issues related to the core codebase, made progress towards completing the 5.0 documentation and added 80 tests to the compatibility test suite bringing the test count to 194. Presently the Fedora Specification is covered by the tests with the exception of coverage of the Messaging section (section 6). While there remain a handful of minor issues/bugs to resolve in the core codebase as well as the Compatibility Test Suite, we are feature complete regarding the specification and the development team is in an excellent position to start the last sprint of the year, which began October 1. This sprint will aim to tag a release candidate, a first cut of the Compatibility Test Suite with complete specification coverage, and complete documentation.
The full report is available online.
Fedora 5.x Documentation
In tandem with the API alignment sprints, we are reviewing and updating the project documentation for the 5.0.0 release. Creating and maintaining accurate and up-to-date documentation is equally as important as software development, so please contribute to this effort.
Oxford Common File Layout
The most recent OCFL call took place on Wednesday, September 12. Notes and audio are available online. This call included a review of extensive additions to OCFL specification, specification roadmap: alpha -> beta -> release 1.0, and upcoming conference submissions. The next meeting will be on Wednesday, October 10 at 11am ET. Please join the ocfl-community mailing list for further updates.
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 .
If you have not already joined the fedora-project Slack workspace please start by visiting the self-registration form. Come join the conversation!
Upcoming Events
Samvera Connect
Samvera Connect will take place October 9-12 in Salt Lake City, Utah. This is a chance for Samvera Project participants to gather in one place at one time, with an emphasis on synchronizing efforts, technical development, plans, and community links. This year's conference will feature a Fedora workshop delivered by David Wilcox.
Islandora Camp San Diego
The last Islandora Camp of 2018 will be in sunny San Diego, CA from November 7 to 9, hosted by San Diego State University. The camp will feature general and introductory sessions about the software and the community that uses and supports it, hand-on workshop training with tracks for Developers and front-end Administrative users, featuring both Islandora 7.x and Islandora CLAW, and sessions on specific sites, tools, and topics of interest to Islandora users. Please register in advance to attend.
Past Events
iPRES
The 15th International Conference on Digital Preservation took place September 24-27 in Boston, MA. iPRES is the premier and longest-running conference series on digital preservation. This year's conference included a paper on the Oxford Common File Layout presented by Fedora Product Manager, David Wilcox. Slides from this presentation are also available.
