DuraSpace Membership Newsletter
sent by September 14, 2017

MESSAGE FROM THE CEO

Dear Friends,

It has been an eventful summer. DuraSpace welcomed two new staff members from Canada and Italy. We look forward to working with Erin Tripp and Michele Mennielli to engage more effectively with our international adopters and potential partners. We traveled to Brisbane, Wrocław, Boston, New York, and Washington, DC to talk about preserving and making accessible and discoverable our collective cultural heritage and academic record. The DSpace, Fedora, and VIVO projects held user group meetings, workshops, and conferences to learn more about your work and to connect people with each other to fortify an already vibrant community of developers, endusers, and administrators. We are most grateful to our hosts at Georgetown, Texas A&M, Cornell, and the University of Oxford for their generosity in organizing and providing venues for these events. Your support makes it possible for a greater diversity of institutions and individuals to participate in Open Source Software community activities.

To promote inclusivity and a safe and welcoming environment for all, this spring DuraSpace worked with leaders on the various projects and with the Board of Directors to draft a Code of Conduct to guide us in all our activities. Thanks, to those of you who contributed to the text. We will review it at the Board meeting next spring and I will solicit input from the community closer to the date of that meeting.

We congratulate the University of Houston Libraries who in August were awarded an IMLS grant to develop migration tooling for ingesting collections to Hyku from CONTENTdm. When they received the news they were cleaning up after sustaining flood damage from Hurricane Harvey. We extend our thoughts and support for our colleagues in the Carolinas, Georgia, and especially Florida who were directly in Hurricane Irma's path only a couple of weeks later. 

On a solemn note, we mourn the loss of Heather Heyer and with our colleagues around the world condemn the acts of violence and bigotry by white supremacist and Neo-Nazi groups in Charlottesville responsible for her death. We have strengthened our resolve to promote and provide inclusive communities and to advocate for All Things Open. We double down on our commitment to serve libraries, museums, archives, and scholars of every stripe to share freely and without fear the collections, perspectives, and ideas that illustrate the beauty in our differences and unite us in our shared mission to promote civil discourse and academic freedom for all.

We look forward to seeing you this fall at conferences and meetings wherever you call home.

Warm regards,

Debra Hanken Kurtz

CEO

2017 Membership Update UPDATED 9/7/17


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:

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

SERVICES

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

ArchivesDirectDSpaceDirect, 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


VIVO Camp

Want to find out more about VIVO, and how it can help your institution showcase it's research and scholarly activity? VIVO Camp is the place to be! Come and join us and experienced teachers at beautiful Duke University for two and a half days of in depth training. Camp runs from November 9th through 11th.  Regsitration is currently open at: https://goo.gl/ocvznb


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 Texas

Fedora Camp Texas, co-hosted by Texas Digital Library and the University of Texas Libraries, will be offered at the University of Texas at Austin's Perry-Castañeda Library in Austin October 16-18, 2017. Training will begin with the basics and build toward more advanced concepts–no prior Fedora experience is required. Participants can expect to come away with a deep dive Fedora learning experience coupled with multiple opportunities for applying hands-on techniques working with experienced trainers and Fedora gurus. 

Register today and join us in Austin! Local accommodations are available at a reduced rate.


WHERE WE'LL BE THIS FALL 

PASIG, Oxford, U.K., September 11-13, Erin Tripp and Michele Mennielli

RDA 10th Plenary Meeting, Montreal, CA, September 19-21, Mike Conlon, David Wilcox 

The DSpace Anwendertreffen, Stuttgart, Germany, September 21, Michele Mennielli

iPRES, Kyoto, Japan, September 25-29, David Wilcox

It Takes a Village Forum, Baltimore, MD, October 4, 5, Debra Hanken Kurtz

Fedora Camp Texas, Austin, TX, October 16-18, David Wilcox, Andrew Woods

North Carolina Library Association Conference, Winston-Salem, NC, October 17th-20th, Heather Greer Klein

DLF Forum, Pittsburgh, PA, October 23-25, Debra Hanken Kurtz, Erin Tripp, David Wilcox

FORCE2017, Berlin, Germany October 25-27, Michele Mennielli

Samvera Connect, Evanston, IL November 6-9, Debra Hanken Kurtz, David Wilcox, Andrew Woods

VIVO Camp, Durham, NC, Nov 9-11, Mike Conlon, Graham Triggs

euroCRIS Strategic Membership Meeting, Bratislava, SlovakiaNov 20-22, Michele Mennielli

EOSC Pilot Meeting, Brussels, Belgium, Nov 28-29, Michele Mennielli

DI4R 2017, Brussels, Belgium, Nov 30-Dec 1, Michele Mennielli

CNI Fall 2017 Membership Meeting, Washington, DC, Dec 11-12,  Debra Hanken Kurtz, Erin Tripp, David Wilcox, Andrew Woods