Member Newsletter, outline/content, Oct 2017

DuraSpace Membership Newsletter
sent by October 18, 2017

MESSAGE FROM THE CEO

Dear Friends,

As the winter holidays approach DuraSpace staff, partners and collaborators have been on the road sharing news, community accomplishments, information, and technical developments. We are pleased to report  the successful conclusion of the 2027 Membership Campaign.

Recently current and past DuraSpace CEOs (Left to right Debra Hanken Kurtz, Michele Kimpton, and Sandy Payette met at the CNI fall meeting in Washington, DC.

The 2017 DuraSpace Membership Campaign closed at the end of October. By joining DuraSpace this year --- members are now connected with the DSpace, Fedora and VIVO projects they depend on. DuraSpace members become open source project part-owners who actively help advance project goals by participating in project governance and software planning and development. Thank you to all our members for believing, as we do, in working together to strengthen the open scholarly ecosystem in order to provide enduring access to the world’s digital heritage.

While our open source projects proudly provide these applications for free for anyone to use, DuraSpace relies on membership fees to pay for staff who provide technical leadership, strategic planning, financial and business services, and communications, outreach and marketing.

Please join me and the DuraSpace staff in wishing our entire community a joyous holiday season and a peaceful and prosperous new year!

Our thanks and appreciation to you, our members for your support and DuraSpace staff recently completed a 4-day retreat where we set the stage forSince May of 2015 DuraSpace has been honored to partner with the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) and Stanford University and  to extend the existing Hydra (now Samvera) project codebase and its vibrant and growing community to build, bundle, and promote a feature-rich, robust, flexible digital repository that is easy to install, configure, and maintain is work hss been made possible with generous support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. As the 30 month grant period comes to a close we are pleased to share the fulfillment of project goals which included working toward offering a cloud-based, hosted version of the application to lower the barrier of entry and expand the number and diversity of institutions capable of leveraging the powerful Hyku digital repository platform (Read more here)

The digital preservation landscape is comprised of a multitude of choices that vary widely in terms of purpose, scale, cost, and complexity. Over the past year a group of collaborating organizations united in the commitment to digital preservation came together to explore how to better communicate with each other and assist members of the wider community as they negotiate this complicated landscape.

The group drafted a Digital Preservation Declaration of Shared Values that is now being released for community comment. The document is available here and the comment period will be open until March 1, 2018. In addition, we welcome suggestions from the community for next steps that would be beneficial as we continue our work together. I encourage your comments, suggestions and observations which may be communicated to the group at comdigpres@googlegroups.com. We also welcome volunteer efforts to translate this declaration into additional languages.

We look forward to seeing you at upcoming conferences and meetings (see "Where We'll Be" below).

Warm regards,

Debra Hanken Kurtz

CEO

2017 Membership Update (needs updating)

Many thanks to our members who have already renewed their membership for 2017 and to those who have joined DuraSpace for the first time as new members. New members include:

• DSpace: ETH Zurich/ETH Library, Naval Postgraduate School and the University of Stirling
• Fedora: University Library Bern and University of Michigan Medical School
• VIVO: German National Library of Science and Technology
• General: Drexel University Libraries

150 members have so far contributed $1,063,333 and joined DuraSpace in the vital effort to provide technical leadership, sustainability planning, fundraising, community development, marketing and communications, collaborations and strategic partnerships and administration to the DSpace, Fedora and VIVO projects. We are winding down the campaign and only have another $131,667 to raise to reach our annual goal. Here's where we are towards meeting targets by project:

Total: $1,063,333; 156 unique members; 89% of goal

• DSpace: $229,500; 55 members; 92% of goal 
• Fedora: $544,750; 71 members; 94% of goal 
• VIVO: $191,583; 24 members; 68% of goal 
• General: $97,500; 19 members ; 115% of goal

SERVICES (please update)

We are pleased to welcome new DSpaceDirect customer California Baptist University.

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 customersupport@duraspace.org to learn more about any of the web services DuraSpace offers.

Call for Participation: Migration/ Upgrade Stories 

DuraSpace is collecting anecdotes from people who have undertaken a migration or a major upgrade in the recent past. We hope to collect stories about how the project went, what resources were used or developed during the process, and whether it turned into an opportunity to update skills, re-engage stakeholders, normalize data, re-envision the service, etc. 

The data will be used by in presentations, blog posts, or other communications that could encourage community members to plan for migrations and major upgrades with an eye toward their benefits. 

The data collection will be done through mediated surveys (interview-style) with Erin Tripp in person, on the phone, or via Skype. If you prefer, you can also fill out the survey online by yourself.  Please express your interest in participating by emailing Erin Tripp at etripp@duraspace.org. 

Save the dates for VIVO 2018

Now in its 9th year, the annual VIVO Conference attracts a mix of developers, thought leaders, and others who are interested in solving problems around using scholarly data. 

On June 6-8, 2018 Duke University will host the 9th Annual VIVO Conference at the gorgeous JB Duke Hotel. This year's early June dates take advantage of North Carolina's mild, warm weather–plan a weekend at the beach which is only two hours away! 

Report: DSpace North American User Group Meeting

On Aug 22-23, 2017 the Georgetown University Library hosted a DSpace North American User Meeting in Washington. The idea was to offer the DSpace Community the possibility to share ideas, best practices and use cases at a Regional level (in this specific case, the US Region) and, at the same time, to present the vision and roadmap for the new DSpace 7 UI project. There were 39 attendees from 22 different institutions at the meeting and the discussion was vibrant and engaging. All the detail information about the meeting, the slides presented and the content shared are publicly available at: https://github.com/terrywbrady/dspaceUserMeeting/blob/master/README.md

Fedora Camp Texa

WHERE WE'LL BE THIS SPRING (Please update)

Supporting FAIR Data Principles with Fedora, IDCC Barcelona, Feb. 19, David Wilcox

DuraSpace Summit, April 10-11, SanDiego, CA, Debra Hanken Kurtz,