Contents

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Charge of the DSpace Community Advisory Team (DCAT)

The

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DSpace Community Advisory Team (DCAT)

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Activities

The following are a list of potential activities for the team members. Team members will help develop and refine priorities as necessary.  Estimated time for each team member is around 5-10 hours a month. For more details about the new feature request review process, click here.

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represents the interests of repository managers and administrators across the globe and, indirectly, DSpace end users. DCAT is a permanent Working Group that advises other DSpace project governance and leadership groups (e.g., DSpace Steering Group). The Team solicits feedback through community-wide discussions, surveys, etc. to help ensure future software releases address the needs of the community. DCAT submits an annual report to the DSpace Steering group that makes the report public after review.

A specific area of focus for DCAT is defined annually by DCAT and the Steering Group.

"Community Engagement" is the focus area for 2023/2024.

DCAT Membership

DCAT members are primarily individuals who function as DSpace repository managers at their institution. Members have an interest in advancing the development of the DSpace software and expanding the DSpace user community. DCAT aims to have global representation in order to provide broad support to the DSpace user community. DCAT members generally devote approximately 5-10 hours per month to the Team.

DCAT Chair

The DCAT Chair is responsible for facilitating the Team. This includes:

• Building consensus among Team members to set the group’s priorities

• Establishing meeting agendas and running meetings

• Reporting and communicating results of these meetings

• Serving as an ex-officio non-voting member of the DSpace Leadership Group

• Establishing sub-teams to work on various projects    

DCAT Meeting Frequency

DCAT holds open monthly teleconference meetings. The DCAT Chair distributes the agenda at least one week in advance. 

For more information and meeting notes visit DCAT Meeting Notes.

Regular DCAT Member Activities

Most of the DCAT members partake in these regular activities:

• Contribute to recommendations for the DSpace Steering Group, DSpace Leadership Group, and DSpace working groups on DCAT perspective and community feedback

• Participate on DCAT projects requested by the DSpace Steering Group, DSpace Leadership Group, and DSpace working groups

• Champion particular feature requests or bug reports. This may include but is not limited to facilitating community-wide discussions on new feature requests, fleshing out minimum requirements and trying to identify potential a project team, interested stakeholders and developers.

• Participate in mailing lists or discussion forums to share knowledge and best practices

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• Attend monthly DCAT teleconference

Other Possible DCAT Member Activities

Some DCAT members are engaged in additional activities:

• Collaborate on projects, tools and resources, including the DSpace Documentation, which serve the community

• Organize physical or virtual user group meetings

• Attend the DSpace Developers meetings

• Survey the DSpace community to solicit comments and suggestions on developments for the software (archived surveys)

• Network regularly with other DSpace users locally and internationally

• Network regularly with the larger repository community, to stay abreast of initiatives and developments elsewhere from which DSpace could benefit

Meetings

The team meets once a month via a conference call. The purpose of the meeting is primarily to share news/information and refine our review process. Most of the work of DCAT takes place outside the meeting, so if there are members who cannot attend either meeting  they can still contribute significantly to the DCAT efforts.

For more information and meeting notes visit DCAT Meeting Notes.

Discussion Schedule

The team will hold weekly new feature request discussions among members as well as broader, community discussions each month.

For the discussion schedule, visit DCAT Discussion Schedule.

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Mailing List

Members of DCAT use a Google Group mailing list for their communications. Anyone from the community is welcome to join.

Team Members

Team members are volunteers from the world-wide DSpace user community. Members will be primarily made up of individuals who function as DSpace repository managers at their institution and have interest in advancing the DSpace software, developing resources/tools for DSpace users and as well as expanding the user community network world-wide. The team aims to have representatives from variety of countries/regions in order to provide broad support the DSpace user community.

Amy Lana - University of Missouri

Augustine Gitonga - Aga Khan University Hospital

Bram Luyten - @mire

Ciarán Walsh - Enovation Solutions, Ltd

Claire Bundy - BioMed Central

Dibyendra Hyoju - Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya/eIFL.net

Elena Feinstein - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Elin Stangeland - Cambridge University Library

Iryna Kuchma - eIFL.net

Jennifer Laherty - Indiana University

Jim Ottaviani - University of Michigan

Leonie Hayes - University of Auckland

Maureen Walsh - The Ohio State University

Michael Guthrie - 

Sarah Shreeves - University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Sue Kunda - Oregon State University

Valorie Hollister - DuraSpace

Yan Han - University of Arizona Libraries

History

DCAT is a reconstituted version of its predecessor, the DSpace Global Outreach Committee.

More information

For more information about DCAT, please contact the chair, Kimberly Chapman . Any question or comment is also welcome on the open mailing list.

Meeting Notes

DCAT Meeting Notes Valorie Hollister at vholister at duraspace.org.