This is the November 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. 

...

Based on recent community discussion [9], two key pieces of community feedback have been made clear:

1. There is a strong desire for Fedora releases to conform to standard semantic versioning [10]
2. There is a strong desire to minimize the number of major releases of Fedora to one per year; where a major release is defined by having non-backwards compatible changes.

...

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The Fedora API Extension Architecture (API-X) working group has been planning a milestone release and associated demo of the API-X framework and an assortment of extensions.  While this does not represent a production release, the framework has matured to the point where it is ready for a round of evaluation and feedback.  They are currently working on an overview and evaluation guide for this demo, an initial skeleton [13] is available on the wiki. If you are interested in evaluating the demo when it is released in order to provide this valuable feedback, please place your name as an evaluator on the page, or stay tuned for further communication.

The API-X team holds regular biweekly meetings. The next meeting [] is Thursday, October 27 at meeting will take place on Thursday, November 10 at 1pm Eastern time. At this meeting the group will discuss the state of the demo. Anybody interested in evaluating the demo is encouraged to attend.

Performance and Scalability

The Performance and Scalability group met on October 24 to review summaries of completed tests [14]. The group agreed to bring together summaries of tests run across different environments and elevate these to the community mailing lists. To aid in this effort, a script is available [15] to output the characteristics of a test system.

If you are interested in Performance and Scalability, please join the discussion on the fedora-community mailing list [16] and attend the next meeting [17] on November 21.

Conferences and events

Upcoming Events

DLF

The 2016 DLF Forum [18] will be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, November 7-9, 2016. Digital Preservation 2016 [19] will be held in conjunction with the Forum, from November 9-10. An Introduction to Fedora 4 workshop [20] will be offered on November 8, along with a project update [21] on November 7.

LITA Forum

The 2016 LITA Forum [22] will take place November 17-20 in Fort Worth, Texas. It is the conference where technology meets the practicality of daily information operations in archives, libraries, and other information services. David Wilcox, Fedora Product Manager, will present an update on the Fedora project [23].

CNI

The 2016 CNI Fall Membership Meeting [24] will take place December 12-13 in Washington, DC. Representatives from CNI member organizations gather twice annually to explore new technologies, content, and applications; to further collaboration; to analyze technology policy issues; and to catalyze the development and deployment of new projects. The meeting will feature several presentations from Fedora community members, including panel discussions on digital preservation and integration with OSF [25].

Previous Events

Hydra Connect

Hydra Connect [26] took place October 3-6 in Boston, MA. 258 Hydra Project participants gathered to share knowledge on the Hydra framework, linked data, Fedora, project management, ruby programming, and metadata. A master list of all sessions [27], including slides and audio/video (where available) can be found on the wiki. 

iPRES

The 13th International Conference on Digital Preservation (iPRES) [28] took 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. David Wilcox, Fedora Product Manager, offered an introductory Fedora 4 tutorial [29] on October 6, and a Fedora User Group Meeting [30] was held on October 7.

eResearch Australasia

The annual eResearch Australasia [31] conference took place October 10-14 in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Esmé Cowles, form Princeton University Library, traveled on behalf of the Fedora project to present a Hydra/Fedora workshop and a talk on curating research data with Hydra and PCDM. The workshop was well-attended, with lots of interest in Fedora and Hydra. Esmé demoed a number of existing Hydra heads, including Plum, Scholarsphere, Avalon, and UCSD DAMS.

Islandora Camp Missouri

Islandora Camp [32] took place in Kansas City, MO on October 12-14. The camp was held at the University of Missouri-Kansas City for three days and included Islandora sessions, workshops, and community presentations. 34 Islandorians from across the US and Canada came together to share how they use Islandora and learn more about how to extend it. Topics included: the State of Islandora CLAW [33], how the University of Missouri does Islandora [34], and how great custom sites like Bowing Down Home [35] are put together. For the full slate of sessions, check out the Camp Schedule [36].

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://groups.google.com/d/msg/fedora-tech/sTB7XzQn1ik/Cndo0fY7EgAJ
[10] http://semver.org/
[11] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/Design+-+Import+-+Export
[12] https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!topic/fedora-community/FEUmoVKX5BQ
[13] https://wiki.duraspace.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=78157890
[14] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/2016-08-15+Performance+-+Scale+meeting
[15] https://github.com/fcrepo4-archive/ff-jmeter-testResults/blob/master/2013-06-03-Fedora4Tests/gatherSystemInfo.sh
[16] https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/fedora-community
[17] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/2016-11-21+Performance+-+Scale+meeting
[18] https://www.diglib.org/forums/2016forum/
[19] http://ndsa.diglib.org/meetings/
[20] https://www.conftool.pro/dlf2016/index.php?page=browseSessions&form_session=36&presentations=show
[21] https://www.conftool.pro/dlf2016/index.php?page=browseSessions&form_session=21&presentations=show
[22] http://forum.lita.org/
[23] http://forum.lita.org/sessions/fedora-4-project-update/
[24] https://www.cni.org/events/membership-meetings/upcoming-meeting/fall-2016
[25] https://osf.io/
[26] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/hydra/Hydra+Connect+2016
[27] https://wiki.duraspace.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=78156660
[28] http://www.ipres2016.ch/
[29] http://www.ipres2016.ch/frontend/index.php?page_id=2833
[30] https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/Events/Bern+Fedora+User+Group+Meeting%3A+7+October+2016
[31] https://conference.eresearch.edu.au/
[32] http://islandora.ca/camps/mo2016
[33] https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/19P5gMF4z8DMX2sE-tQGFVwyj9z0MLy17C53U5RGkHkc/edit?usp=sharing
[34] http://islandora.ca/camps/mo2016/sites/default/files/Journey%20to%20the%20center%20of%20Missouri.pdf
[35] http://islandora.ca/sites/default/files/Bowing%20Down%20Home%20%20-%20Islandora%20iCampMO.pdf
[36] http://islandora.ca/camps/mo2016/schedule