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- Thank you to our members who traveled to Albuquerque earlier this month to share ideas for improving DSpace, Fedora, and VIVO at the DuraSpace Summit (see report below).
- The 2017 Membership Campaign is underway with the aim of deeply engaging members from all over the world in working together to provide enduring access to the world’s digital heritage.
- One web site We have started work on combining our project and services web sites into a single DuraSpace web site. Based on our Summit discussions and previous strategic evaluation DuraSpace is headed in the direction of integrating mindshare, resources, and efforts across technologies where possible. This effort is coupled with the strategic suggestion from our community that we position the value of our organization “higher” in the scholarly ecosystem food chain to more fully align our mission with the objectives of our partners, collaborators, and customers. In addition we have had appeals from international groups to define more clearly nuances in our tools and services and to promote the DuraSpace organization as a whole as the "go-to group" for our suite of open source technologies and hosted services. A unified web presence is step towards this goal. other? (From Val: should we highlight the new hires? I know it is mentioned below, but this is big news)
- This month we extend a warm welcome to Erin Tripp, our new Business Development Manager who will join us on May 1, and Michele Mennielli, who will serve as our International Membership and Partnership Manager beginning on July 1.
Erin has a tremendous breadth and depth of experience with community-supported open source repository software, coupled with strong communications and interpersonal skills. She is creative, thoughtful, and direct, all qualities necessary to succeed developing and fostering new community efforts. Michele has worked with DuraSpace on many DSpace-related marketing initiatives targeted at greater International engagement. He is seen as a leader in the community with a large global network and a proven track record community building. We are thrilled to have them on board!
Warm regards,
Debra Hanken Kurtz
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