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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.
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- 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.
(-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
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. Community members do work with vendor partners/ contributors who can help in getting an institution up an running, or developing new functionality.
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
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costs
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- It is important to acknowledge that managing digital materials/collections has a cost to it. This can be managed in different ways, as the management of any system can be undertaken. Up front I agree that there is a need to be realistic about what investment is needed, but highlighting that this is an investment in the future and not just a cost.
-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?
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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.
-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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Probably also a question of volume. With large collections of items, to effectively find anything it needs to be managed better than throwing in a bucket.
- 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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- 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.
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(-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 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.
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- How do we measure Samvera against other (not OS) systems?
I can't compile an answer for this one
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- 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
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-Discuss the investments (time, money, and staff-time) that leading partner institutions have made? Is this also where we get into the value of open sources repo technology for the future of accessible, open-access scholarly communications? Yes
- What do you mean when you say you are part of a community? How does that work? (with regard to trying to explain OS and Samvera and other communities we belong to as a team)
Rather than going it alone, we consider this shared work to greatly benefit us as for every bit we give, there are 30-odd other universities similarly giving of their time and enhancing Samvera. While we could create a stand-alone system, we'd be doing it ourselves, and the expense of maintaining something custom, over the longrun, would outstrip the occasional costs of Samvera participation. The 90's taught us all a lot of bad habits for localized software development rather than working with others to ensure multiple hands were in play to keep a system going and improving.
(I copied Ryan's response from under Where are you off to this time?)
- What are the stakeholder categories of the Community (Partner/ Adopter/ etc...)
-I suppose we should get clarity from the Governance Model WG before drafting a response to this. This will more likely come from the Contribution Model WG: at present it goes Partner/Member of the Community (adopter, kicking the tires etc)/Supporter (likely an adopter who contributes cash but does little else for the Community)
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-I appreciated this link Chris shared way back at the founding of the Marketing WG: https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/marketing-open-source-project/. Perhaps we could paraphrase a few points from this piece, especially with regard to the value of the community as the identity of the software.
Communication
- How can I connect with the Samvera community and stay up to date on developments?
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There are a several ways to stay connected. For newcomers to the community
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there is the Samvera Community Google Group and Slack #general. For Partners
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there is the Samvera Partners Google Group and Slack # partners. For Developers
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there is Slack
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#dev. For attendees at Samvera Connect, Slack
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#connect.
Technical
- Where can I try/download Samvera?
All the software is available through the community's github site at https://github.com/samvera. Documentation is available at http://samvera.github.io/. A test instance of Hyrax is made available by Data Curation Experts (DCE) at https://nurax.curationexperts.com/
- My institution/organisation is moving more and more stuff into the cloud. Can I have Samvera in the cloud?
Hyku was created specifically to work in the cloud as a multi-tenanted solution for delivering repository solutions. There is a Hyku Interest Group that is taking forward the development of Hyku for use in this context.
Several Samvera repositories are deployed or partially deployed via AWS. AMI's, docker storage and other cloud-friendly technologies are being used to support Samvera deployment and Samvera solution bundles (example: Avalon is fully deployable in AWS and uses AWS transcoding to create multiple bitrate versions of uploaded media content)
- Does Samvera meet good standards of accessibility/security/.etc..?
The Hyrax gem, which is the basis of most Samvera systems at the moment, has undergone an external accessibility audit. A few minor issues were found which are currently being addressed.
- How stable is the code?
The code is being actively developed on an ongoing basis, but is also being released in managed ways. Hyrax has a roadmap that highlights ongoing development and likely release schedule; individual gems have component owners who announce new releases periodically.
- Who else is using Samvera, and how are they using it? and how?
There is a list of sites using Samvera at https://samvera.org/samvera-partners/ ? (this needs updating with more links)
Legal
- Who owns the IPR? (internal question)
Samvera code is released under an Apache 2 open source license. All contributors to the code, and their institutions, have signed a Contributor License Agreement granting Samvera the right to distribute the contributions they have made.
Samvera documentation is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License except where specifically noted. - Who owns the license again?
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