Fedora Newsletter: May 2023

Welcome to the May edition of the Fedora newsletter. This month we are sharing new and exciting opportunities to engage with the community, the program team and how to get involved. We are also talking about Membership and what you can do to advocate for Fedora at your institution! Read on to find out more.

NEWS

Engaging with the Fedora Community

Over the last several months we have been focused on creating new ways to engage with our users as we continue to gather information on Fedora use cases and needs from within the community. These opportunities have been met with overwhelmingly positive responses and we are excited to continue to these opportunities to connect.

Here are some ways to get involved:

Fedora Open Office Hours – May 31 at 12 p.m., EST

On the last Wednesday of each month, members of the Program Team, Governance members and Fedora committers come together to host Fedora Open Office Hours. These sessions are intended to provide an additional opportunity for individuals to ask questions outside of the normal communication channels. Anyone and everyone, regardless of expertise level, is encouraged to drop in to ask your questions or hear from the Program team about ongoing work.

The Open Office Hours are hosted in different time zones each month to accommodate our global user-base.

Even numbered months – 9 a.m. EST (Join: https://bit.ly/3VGKURs)
Odd numbered months – 12 p.m. EST (Join: https://bit.ly/3pffGEV)

Fedora Technology Information Gathering Sessions

We have been hosting a series of Fedora Technology Information Gathering Sessions to hear from our users about their Fedora implementations. These sessions are a critical next step in our future planning for Fedora and we need as many voices to participate as possible. Ensuring that Fedora technology will meet the needs of our community is our top priority, but we need your support to ensure representation at the table. Read more about the purpose, structure and delivery of the sessions.

We have divided the sessions into two groups to help guide the discussions:

Users of older versions of Fedora and/or new Fedora users (or those interested in using)
Fedora 6.x users

The following are the remaining discussion times:

Users on older versions/new users:

Fedora 6.x Users

Fedora Technology Updates

OAI-PMH Integration Work

Last month, we held two open community sessions to help understand the community’s interest in an OAI-PMH integration for Fedora 6. From these conversations we determined that there was enough of a perceived need to begin the work of planning for this development. Dan Field has started the initial mapping legwork and has opened a Jira Ticket related to this work.

Anyone interested or availble to assist with this work to speed up the development process is encouraged to reach out to Dan directly at dan.field@lyrasis.org or come to any of the weekly tech meetings (every Thursday @ 11am Eastern) to hear more about how to get involved.

Fedora in the Community

As a community we are always grateful to individuals or institutions who are willing to share their perspectives and user stories with us. It is through sharing this information that we are able to understand how our users are implementing their technologies, understand what questions they have and look for ways to address their concerns.

This month we want to share two blog posts that are related to conversations happening within the community surrounding the features and digital preservation capabilities offered with Fedora 6.

The first comes from Kevin Borwin who shares his experience testing Fedora 6 using Fly.io and Cloudflare’s R2 storage. Read about his experience.

The second was written by Jonathan Rochkind following an in-depth OCFL discussion initially started during Code4Lib in March. In his blog he talks about some varying perspectives on OCFL as a “source of truth” within a digital repository focused on preservation. Read Jonathan’s blog post.

Note: If you are interested in following this OCFL conversation thread further and want to learn more about what others are doing, the OCFL community Slack is a great place to start, or I would encourage you to join in on any of the monthly community meetings.

What's Happening in Our Partner Communities

Samvera

Seeking volunteers to join the Julie Allinson Award Committee
Fill out the Doodle poll for the committee kick off meeting
Samvera Hyrax/Hyku Valkyrization Community Effort
Information on the current effort to see Valkyrization efforts completed for Hyrax/Hyku users
See information on the Pledge Drive
Samvera Connect location announced – Pittsburg, PA from Oct 22-26, 2023
Samvera Community Annual Report for 2022 released

Islandora

IslandoraCon – July 25-28, 2023 at U of T Scarborough Campus in Toronto, ON
Registration is open. Early bird pricing in effect until May 28, 2023
Islandora Ambassador Program – call for feedback
Read more about the program and its objectives.

OCFL

CFL Community Meeting information

Where to Find Us

May

Texas Conference on Digital Libraries – Austin, TX

May 16-19, 2023

Fedora Presentation: Completing grant work during pandemic times & how a series of unforeseen obstacles elevated the end result

Presented by: Arran Griffith

Technical & Field Related Problems of Traditional & Electronic Archiving Conference – May 24-26, 2023

Presenting Virtually: Introduction to Fedora 6.x

June

Open Repositories – Stellenbosch, South Africa

June 12-15, 2023

Fedora Workshop: Fedora 6.x - Understanding the Oxford Common File Layout (OCFL), Intro to Migration Tools & Community Integrations

Presented by: Dan Field

Fedora-related presentations: Repository Rodeo

Find other events and conferences we are participating in on the Fedora Community Calendar.

See a conference you want to attend and have a collaborative idea you’d like to work with the Fedora team on? Email us at arran.griffith@lyrasis.org. We would love to work together on join presentations to help bring Fedora to more users.

Membership Changes and New Opportunities

With a new fiscal year approaching, the Fedora Governance Group has taken this time to evaluate our current membership benefits and make some changes for the upcoming membership year.

Beginning July 1, 2023, we have adjusted and opened Governance seat opportunities for new levels of Fedora membership! As a pilot, we are now offering an opportunity for members at the Copper level to join Fedora Governance. By lowering barriers to participation, we hope to bring more diverse and more representative voices from our entire community to the decision-making table. Wider participation allows us to focus, plan and continue to develop the software used for digital preservation while protecting the priceless content contained within your repository for the long-term.

Fedora Copper Membership Infographic Image

Fedora is an open-source, community-supported program funded entirely by membership contributions. Your funding supports our staff who work to develop, teach, engage and support all active Fedora users. Without our members, we would not be able to support the preservation of the vital content contained within the repositories of our users. Find out how you can help. Learn more and become a member today!

Become a Member

Fedora Registry

Part of our mission with Fedora 6.0 is to better understand our user install base. As a result, we are reaching out to the community now to help with these efforts. Is your institution in our registry? If so, are all the details up to date? Check out the current Fedora Registry.

Need an update or need to add your instance? You can do so here.

By understanding our install base and what versions of Fedora are being used, we will be better prepared to provide the support necessary for our entire community.

GET INVOLVED

Fedora is designed, built, used, and supported by the community. Join the conversation on our Fedora Slack channel or sign up for our Fedora community mailing list to stay in the loop. You can find more details here.