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Karen's responses
Richard's suggestions
Chris's suggestions (and notes/suggestions)
Ryan's pedantic responses
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Samvera is an open source digital repository framework that is community driven. The software technology stack utilizes four major components: Fedodra Fedora repository software, Solr indexes, Blacklight and Samvera gems. A Samvera repository provides functionality for a flexible and extensible digital repository solution. From the beginning, Samvera has been envisioned as a collaborative effort sustained by a vibrant community of developers, repository managers, metadata experts and users working together to develop a repository solution. The name Samvera is an icelandic Icelandic term meaning "togetherness."
Note: There are a lot of definitions to What is Samvera? out there. Look at Samvera.org; Samvera in wikipedia and Richard's trifold idea. We should settle on one.
Note/suggestion: Possibly reverse the sentences on community and technology to put the community first. Highlight combination of widely used and community-specific components (making Samvera more than the sum of its parts). Thorny query - how much do we emphasise Fedora in this, given the development of Valkyrie. We have to mention it, but we also now need to highlight the flexibility - maybe mention the intention of technology sustainability through the ability to switch out components?
- What is Samvera being used for?
Samvera is being used to support a variety of needs at educational and cultural institutions including developing digital repositories for access copies of faculty publications and content of Archives and Special Collections; as a platform for scholarly communication through projects like DPLA, Fulcrum and Ubiquity Press; for the management and access of media collections; and for managing and preserving research data.
Note - include geo-referenced data? I know there has been activity on this, but I'm not aware of an active service using it currently.
- What is Samvera going to cost us?
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I would remove this question. I think the community understands the value of organized information and the need for metadata for preservation and access. To answer this question requires going into why libraries organize inforomation and the need for managing, preserving and providing longterm access to the scholarly record.
Note - I take your point, but wonder if we need to assume that those accessing this information might not be in 'our' community, hence there is value in the approach of stating the obvious. To that end, see suggestion below.
- Content can be stored and/or presented through alternative systems and interfaces, but without the organisation that a repository provides the content will lose its context and value over time and require additional work to maintain it, increasing the total cost of managing the content. Many systems offer the ability to deposit, manage, deliver or preserve content, but only repositories like Samvera look to provide all of these in a single package.
-Something about structured, facetable metadata-accessibility, discoverability, navigability? Is this a question about the very use/value/function of searchable repositories?
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- What does Samvera give us that DSpace/EPrints/ContentDM/Islandora, etc. doesn't?
I need help crafting an answer to this question - it's not either or.
-Samvera operates on the most updated versions of Fedora, Apache, etc.; other solutions operate on outdated dependencies. (I don't actually know if this is technically true-it's just something I've heard! Do others know?) Samvera gives you an open solution and a community to work with to improve the code.
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