Dear Friends,
As DuraSpace staff join community members everywhere in celebrating summer holidays we want to provide you with an update you on current and ongoing initiatives.
I am serving as interim CEO of DuraSpace through October 2018 assisted by CFO Val Hollister and Services Technical Director Bill Branan. They are focused on ongoing strategic initiatives which include:
Continuing the strong financial success of 2017–DuraSpace revenue grew by 10% or $217K over 2016 with the growth coming from Cloud Service revenue, which was up by 33% or $158K.
Business Opportunities and Diversified Revenue Streams–As our community grows and changes, we in turn are being called on to coordinate and share skills and resources more widely and efficiently.
International Outreach and Action–DuraSpace is broadening and extending our reach to support global scholarly ecosystem efforts to preserve and make accessible cultural heritage and academic resources globally.
Strategic Partners–DuraSpace Strategic Partners are aligned with our mission and help fulfill it by working with their communities to meet shared goals.
Extending Membership Benefits–The current business model that relies on membership funds to sustain our open source projects is not sustainable. Institutions in North America, our main contributors, are facing funding issues. We need to change our membership focus to include outreach for memberships internationally.
The DuraSpace Board of Directors in collaboration with DuraSpace staff will issue a job description and call for applicants for the CEO position later this summer.
As we enact this interim management and ongoing strategic development DuraSpace staff and Board remain grateful for our community’s financial support, and for their engagement in the enterprise we share as we work together to provide enduring access to the world’s digital heritage.
Warm regards,
Erin Tripp
Interim CEO
2018 Membership Campaign (pls update)
Thank you to each of our renewing DuraSpace members for your continued support. You each have joined DuraSpace in the vital effort to provide technical leadership, strategic planning, community outreach, software release coordination, and marketing and communications to the DSpace, Fedora and VIVO open source projects. With the 2018-19 membership campaign only 2 months old here's where we are towards meeting the goals by project:
Total: $903,500; 141 unique members; 79% of goal
- DSpace: $208,417; 53 members; 81% of goal
- Fedora: $456,667; 62 members; 80% of goal
- VIVO: $147,416; 19 members; 71% of goal
- General: $91,000; 19 members ; 87% of goal
If you have questions about your membership, please contact Valorie Hollister <vhollister@duraspace.org>.
Leadership Group Election Results (pls update)
SERVICES (pls update)
Webinar recording: DuraCloud in 2018: What’s New? What’s Next for the Software & the Service?
On May 24th DuraSpace Services Coordinator, Heather Greer Klein, presented a DuraSpace community webinar, “DuraCloud in 2018: What’s New? What’s Next for the Software & the Service?” Heather shared an overview of the services that DuraSpace offers including DuraCloud, an open source preservation storage system and hosted service designed to make it easy to preserve data in the cloud. Heather detailed DuraCloud’s features, storage options, and hosted service options in the United States and Europe. Attendees also learned about DuraCloud as open source software, the development roadmap, and the new pricing options for storing over 20 TB and the first year discount available to new DuraSpace members.
The presentation slides and webinar recording are available at https://duraspace.org/webinar/.
New Customers
We are excited to welcome new DSpaceDirect customer Bryan College of Health Sciences.
ArchivesDirect, DSpaceDirect, and DuraCloud services from DuraSpace are built on solid open source software platforms and require very little effort to start up. DuraSpace staff experts work directly with service customers to provide personalized on-boarding processes and superb customer support. Our services can provide open access to institutional resources, preservation of treasured collections, and simplified data management tools. Contact Heather Greer Klein to learn more about any of the web services DuraSpace offers, and to learn about special discounts for new DuraCloud subscribers who are DuraSpace members at the Silver level and above.
WHERE WE'LL BE THIS SUMMER (All Please UPDATE)
ARCHIVES*RECORDS 2018, Washington, DC, August 12-18 - Heather Greer Klein
