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Ryan's pedantic responses

Alicia's rewrite

General

  • What is Samvera?

Samvera is an open source digital repository framework that is community driven. The software technology stack utilizes four major components: Fedodra 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 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.

(-A community and a technology stack. or solution? for managing access to digital objects/materials.    Samvera is a community driven framework for creating digital asset management systems [should we tread carefully with the idea that Samvera can be a DAMS?  Some institutions (including mine) are trying to use Hyrax for light digital asset management, but at this point Samvera seems most developed for access repos, less so for preservation repos or DAMS] and well-described repositories of digital objects. -The Icelandic term for 'togetherness')

  •   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 cultural heritage items, 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.


(-Digital repositories for access copies of faculty publications and cultural heritage items; platforms for scholarly communication.  (Highlight public/high profile projects like DPLA, Fulcrum, Ubiquity Press?)  Maybe touch on how some institutions use Hyrax for light digital asset management and workflow management?    )

  • What is Samvera going to cost us?

There is a cost in terms of investing in developers, digital repository and metadata librarian, and contributing to the Samvera Community. It is also important to consider that joining the open-source community is an investment in the future of collecting, managing, preserving and providing long-term access to your digital content.  

NOTE: This is from the Samver FAQ page:

How much does Samvera cost?

The Samvera software does not cost anything. It is free and open source, available under an Apache 2 license. Of course, this is free in the same way that stray puppies come free: you will have your own ongoing support and maintenance costs.

(-Until Hyku is a reliable, adoptable thing, we probably should be pretty up-front about the staff resources that an institution needs to build and maintain a Samvera-based repository--a designated developer at a minimum.  Here at Lafayette we have a Digital Initiatives Developer and a Digital Repository Librarian who both spend a majority of their time working on the repository.  That time distribution may or may not change once we get our repository up and running and our existing content migrated.  I wonder if we might also mention consultation costs.  Even with two designated staff members I'm not sure we could have effectively gotten going on our Samvera repo without our consultation engagement with Data Curation Experts.  I agree

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-We do have vendor partners/ contributors who can get people in there if we're talking about getting started up or even hosting -  )


  • How much work will it take us to implement Samvera?

Need help rewriting this one

(-How do we want to break down this question?  I have a handy "roadmap" from our consultation with DCE that details how to build a Samvera-based repository according to phases in a certain order.  Do we want to get this granular?  Or do we want to offer a general answer about how much designated staff time in what timeframe is necessary to get up, running, maintaining, and growing? I would say give a low range and high range and qualify.  Say for a quick implementation with no customization it could take a knowledgeable Rails developer X amount of time. But depending on how complex a system you need and how much customization, it could also take months/years.I agree, but again emphasizing the investment being made.


Content management

  • Why don't we just put the content on a shared drive/webpage/SharePoint, etc.?


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.  

-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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Samvera provides the ability to curate and provide exhibits from a single database (to simplify Fedora), provide content specific finding tools (GeoBlacklight, etc...).  And would really double down on the shared community development aspect - everyone says it, but we actually do it 


  • I've heard people talk about Hyku, Hyrax, Sufia and more.  What are they?  What's the difference?

Hyrax is a relatively new Samvera component that combines the best parts of two previous Ruby gems, Sufia and Curation Concerns.  It provides most of the “back-end” functionality that is needed to build a Samvera application. Hyrax utilizes the Samvera framework to provide users with a base-level institutional repository (IR) solution that can be customized, allowing for easier upgrades and better sustainability as the users are not working with an entirely home-grown DAMS or IR. 

Hyku is the product release from the Hydra-in-a-Box (HyBox) project and it is built using Hyrax as its basis. Hyku is an easily installed “solution bundle” which provides a basic repository system.  Hyku can be installed locally or provided as a cloud service; it can be configured for single or multi-tenant use. Here's an example:  A vendor could use HyKu to run a single instance which would be home to multiple customers utilizing the same Fedora, Valkyrie and core components but display entirely locally with local control for customers. 

Sufia is a predecessor of Hyrax - and while it continues to exist at some institutions, Hyrax is a combination of Sufia, Curation Concerns and original development work from the Samvera community.  


(-From Samvera FAQ: Hyrax is a relatively new Samvera component that combines the best parts of two previous Ruby gems, Sufia and Curation Concerns.  It provides most of the “back-end” functionality that is needed to build a Samvera application.  Hyku is the product release from the Hydra-in-a-Box (HyBox) project and it is built using Hyrax as its basis. .. Hyku Hyku is an easily installed “solution bundle” which provides a basic repository system.  Hyku can be installed locally or provided as a cloud service; it can be configured for single or multi-tenant use.

Hyrax utilizes the Samvera framework to provide users with a base-level IR solution that can be customized, allowing for easier upgrades and better sustainability as the users are not working with an entirely home-grown DAMS or IR.  HyKu is a multi-tenant version of Hyrax that allows for an organization to host multiple instances of Hyrax at scale - example:  A vendor could use HyKu to run a single instance which would be home to multiple customers utilizing the same Fedora, Valkyrie and core components but display entirely locally with local control for customers.  Sufia is a predecessor of Hyrax - and while it continues to exist at some institutions, Hyrax is a combination of Sufia, Curation Concerns (question) and original development work from the Samvera community.    )


  • How do we measure Samvera against other (not OS) systems?

I can't compile an answer for this one

-Community operation and participation / ability to modify the code / ability to integrate other tools

-I think we double down on Community ownership and management here.  From a technology perspective, it's a matter of taste in many ways - but we do run on Ruby, and it's maybe easier to recruit Ruby devs than, say, Java devs if DSpace is any indication (Java devs can make $$$$ in the real world)

  • Is there an exit strategy for me when I need to move on?

We know that nothing lasts for ever and that some of our community will probably wish to move on to other, non-Samvera solutions in time.  Samvera is developing bulk import and export capability - the second of which will allow the contents of a Samvera repository to be exported in a way that might be consumed by other platforms.

Community

  • Where are you off to this time (and why)? - in relation to travelling to events/meetings

The value of participation in a community in terms of adding to the local resource through shared knowledge and practice.  The value of face-to-face communication to support this.  The equivalence with attending system user groups for commercial systems (in terms of costs equivalence).  The value of growing the community.  See the letter that Mark Bussey pointed us at re: Agile2008 - see https://www.agilealliance.org/convince 

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