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This is the March 2017 edition of the Fedora Newsletter. This newsletter summarizes the most significant activities within the Fedora community over the last month.

Call for Action

Fedora is designed, built, used, and supported by the community. An easy and important way that you can contribute to the effort is by helping resolve outstanding bugs. If you have an interest in gaining a better understanding of the Fedora code base, or a specific interest in any of these bugs, please add a comment to a ticket and we can work together to move your interest forward.

Software development 

Standards

Fedora API Specification

The Fedora community is working to establish a clearly defined specification for the core Fedora services. This specification details the exact services and interactions required for a server implementation to be verified as "doing Fedora". 

The draft specification has been published and is looking for community comments. Following this round of input, we plan on an initial release of the specification in the spring of 2017.

Fedora API Adopters Guide

An inaugural meeting for creating organized documentation targeting developers of applications and frameworks that currently interact with Fedora 4 was held on February 10.

As the formalization of the Fedora API Specification matures, it will be increasingly important for existing applications and frameworks over Fedora to adjust client/server interactions to the specification. The services defined in the Fedora API Specification are the same ones that are currently provided by Fedora 4, but the interaction models in some cases are changing to be more in line with broader standards. The effort of this group is to facilitate the adjustment of client-side tooling by detailing the "deltas" between the current Fedora 4 implementation and the emerging specification.

Please stay tuned for updates and opportunities for engagement.

Community-driven Activity

Import/Export Tooling

One of the design goals of Fedora is to simplify the process of both getting your resources into and out of Fedora in a standardized way. This enables the reuse of Fedora resources in other contexts, such as exporting to a separate preservation system, as well as provides a pathway for migrating across Fedora installations, such as migrating from a LevelDB backend to PostgreSQL. Half of the problem is solved with the existing GET/POST interactions for RDF and non-RDF resources provided by the Linked Data Platform API. The other half should be addressed by tooling external to Fedora. In addition to the basic import/export of simple RDF and non-RDF resources, there is also significant community interest in supporting import/export of BagIt bags.
The third import/export sprint was completed in December, and stakeholders have had an opportunity to test the new functionality and provide feedback. If you would like to try out the utility please check out the README file for instructions.

API Extension Architecture 

The first milestone release of the API Extension Architecture is now publically available. A Docker-based demonstration of API-X with accompanying step-by-step evaluation guide has been prepared for those who are interested in concretely exploring API-X and providing valuable feedback. Please take a look at it, give it a try, and provide feedback by February 9. An introductory video providing an overview of API-X can also be found on YouTube. This milestone and demo represent the culmination of a year of design and development effort from a broad swath of the Fedora community, and has been helped along by an IMLS National Digital Platform grant.

The API-X team holds regular monthly meetings. The next meeting will take place on Thursday, February 16 at 1pm Eastern time.

Conferences and events

In an attempt to simplify the task of keeping up with Fedora-related meetings and events, a Fedora calendar is available to the community as HTML  and iCal .

Upcoming Events

Code4Lib

The annual Code4Lib conference, which takes place March 6-9 in Los Angeles, CA, is an annual gathering of technologists from around the world, who largely work for and with libraries, archives, and museums and have a commitment to open technologies. The conference will feature several Fedora-related workshops, including Fedora Import/Export, Islandora in the Wild, and Performance and Scale Testing of Fedora. Please register in advance if you plan to attend.

DC Area Fedora User Group Meeting

The Washington D.C. Area Fedora Users Group meets twice annually to share project updates, exchange ideas, and collaborate on Fedora-related activities. The next meeting will take place March 22-23 at the Library of Congress. The meetings are open to anyone who would like to attend.

LDCX

LDCX is an annual unconference that brings together leading technologists in the libraries, archives and museums (LAM) spaces, to work collaboratively on common needs. The event will take place March 27-29 at Stanford University. Registration is complimentary, and please register at the LDCX 2017 Eventbrite if you are interested in attending.

Hydra Developer Congress

The Hydra Developer Congress emphasizes community code exchange and moving community development goals forward. This can include, but is not limited to, the topics listed in this year's agenda, as well as development issues and recommendations that may surface as priorities from the Hydra community, working groups, and interest groups. If you are a developer with a signed Hydra contributor license agreement (CLA) -- or are confident that you can submit a signed CLA by mid-March -- and you're available to attend the meeting, please register online. Registration is complimentary.

CNI


DuraSpace Summit


ILIDE


RDA 9th Plenary Meeting


Hydra Camp


Museums and the Web


Previous Events

Hydra Regional Meeting

The West Coast Hydra Regional Meeting took place on February 10, 2017 at McHenry Library at UC Santa Cruz in Santa Cruz, CA.

Mid West Fedora User Group Meeting

The second Midwest Fedora User Group meeting took take place February 28th to March 1st. 

IDCC

The 12th International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC)  was held in Edinburgh from February 20-23, 2017 bringing together digital curation professionals and educators with data producers and consumers to consider digital curation in a multi-disciplinary context. David Wilcox, Fedora product manager for DuraSpace, offered a full-day Fedora workshop, “Curating Digital Content with Fedora,” on Thursday, February 23. 


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