DCAT Meeting Notes May 14, 2013

Attendees

Amy Lana - University of Missouri
Bram Luyten - @mire
Elin Stangeland - Cambridge University Library
Iryna Kuchma - eIFL.net
James Evans - Biomed Central/Open Repository
Jim Ottaviani - University of Michigan
Sarah Molloy - Queen Mary, University of London
Sarah Potvin - Texas A&M University
Sarah Shreeves - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Valorie Hollister - DuraSpace

Time

• 10:00am Eastern/14:00 UTC

Dial-in

We will use the international conference call dial-in. Please follow directions below.

• U.S.A/Canada toll free: 866-740-1260, participant code: 2257295
• International toll free: http://www.readytalk.com/intl
  
  • Use the above link and input 2257295 and the country you are calling from to get your country's toll-free dial in #
  • Once on the call, enter participant code 2257295
    
    

Discussion Topics

Discussion Notes/References

1) News

DSpace roadmap meeting last week 

• Val
  
  • born from discussions at the sponsor summit in March - desire to plan for how DSpace can meet challenges in the next 3-5 years
  • a dozen people from about 10 institutions got together - w/input from a few more
  • group began discussion of what the future DSpace should look like and began to discuss the use cases that it would aim to serve
  • will be on-going virtual discussions about what should be in core space - clear need to rearchitect it into a flexible, simple, extendable core that allows for integration w/3rd party svcs or add-on modules - needs have really changed from when it was originally designed 
  • group not prepared to offer vision/roadmap yet -- but will be working on it over the next several months
  • next steps 
  • • there will be some more communication on the mtg - both on the listserv and duraspace blog post
    • more virtual discussions to develop vision
    • presentation/discussion at OR - get more feedback from the community
    • following having a vision/high level roadmap will be another set of discussions on governance - who will be paying for and shaping the next DSpace
• Sarah S.
  
  • tension between DSpace that does 'everything' or DSpace that has core funtionality that is important for repository activities - find a way to scale back to core, but make more modular to allow for extensability, integrations
  • DCAT is likely an appropriate group to help represent community
    
    • silent majority - use older version of DSpace, don't upgrade, aren't involved/aren't communicating with community about needs
    • active group - think and contribute to community
    • pushing the boundaries group
  • pushed back on DSpace as a Hydra head - for now - need vision before making any specific decisions about direction
  • governance discussion needs to be separate from an 'ask' for support/resources - so that there is clarity in what the vision is 
• Jim
  
  • governance and how it relates to the vision
  • vision requires a lot of buy in from active users - establish core use cases and construct DSpace so that it addresses those needs
• Sarah P.
  
  • role of the hosted solution - DSpaceDirect - and how it may play into development
  • looking to satisfy current DSpace users or attract more / broader users 
• Amy
  
  • DSpace / Fedora merge - might end up there - need to work on vision first

DCAT/Committer mtg - sign up on the mtg page, propose topics: DevMtg 2013-07-08 - OR13 Meeting

2) Proposed tweaks on how DCAT works together

• Val: re-visit the idea of DCAT working on JIRA tkts – or is being involved in projects like the metadata improvements project as much as we can manage?
• Bram: the value added to JIRA tkts varies - depends on individual's knowledge and time available, Bram works on documentation related JIRA issues
• Maureen: DCAT members could still work on JIRA tkts if we aren't working on other projects
• Elin: Objectives of doing 3 issues per month might have been too much – to much for everyone to read, think about and comment on 
• Val: So is it reasonable to re-start JIRA review if we set reasonable objectives - maybe just one JIRA issue for all of DCAT per month? one discussion leader and one issue? (everyone generally agreed)
• Re-post/reminder of tools for JIRA discussions:
• Val: also want to talk at some point about joint mtgs between DCAT and committers - DCAT always welcome to attend cmtr mtgs can certainly get on the formal agenda. Propose putting on the potential mtg topics for OR mtg a proposal to have 4x a year cmtr/dcat mtgs. 

Bram's JIRA refresher:

During the last meeting we were talking about DCAT's assistance in dealing with JIRA tickets. Here are a few links and a tidbit of information to explore JIRA if you are not yet really familiar with it.

Just going to http://jira.duraspace.org may be a bit confusing because you will also see the other projects that Duraspace hosts in there.

The following link sends you straight to the "Issues" tab within the DSpace project, I think it really gives a great overview: https://jira.duraspace.org/browse/DS#selectedTab=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.project%3Aissues-panel

Here's a reminder about the different stages you can see in "status summary"

Closed - hurray, it's fully handled!

Received - requests that require a first early scan to see whether they contain enough detail or not. If it does, it goes to the "volunteer needed" stage, otherwise it goes back to the submitter in the "more details needed".

More details needed - committers haven't been able to unambiguously interpret tickets in these stage, therefore, additional details are required before a volunteer can be assigned

Volunteer needed - Issues that have been found relevant and/or reproduced (in case of bugs). They are waiting for a volunteer who can come up with a solution

Accepted - There is a volunteer who is currently working on a solution

Code review needed - The volunteer made his solution available and is now waiting for a review before it can get accepted to the DSpace sourcecode.

I think DCAT can really help in the bolded stages:

Received: help to judge whether the incoming tickets contain enough detail

More details needed: try to ask relevant questions in the comments, poking the original submitter to provide more detail

Volunteer needed: There are today 155 issues waiting for a volunteer. You can put some of these tickets in the spotlight by commenting or +1 on them to indicate that they are really important to you.

more info about the process:

https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/JIRA+Workflow+Improvements

An easy example - ticket about documentation for the cleanup script

https://jira.duraspace.org/browse/DS-1545

This is in the "more details needed" phase: where do you think that additional documentation or warnings should be about the fact that content will _only_ be really deleted if you execute the cleanup script.

3) Metadata improvements project

• Bram: confirmed taht checksum is not an issue
• No further work yet on proposal refinement and provocative questions
• Maureen: Would be good to have time to discuss this with the community – answer questions and discuss as opposed to present proposal 
• Val: Will check on getting time for it
• Iryna/Bram: Might be good to get on OAI8 user group agenda - will discuss further together 

Actions Items