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A page to capture questions we are asked about Samvera and/or repositories in general.

Charlotte's notes/responses

Karen's responses

Richard's suggestions

Chris's suggestions

Ryan's pedantic responses

General

  • What is Samvera?

-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?

-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?

-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

- 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?

-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.?

-Something about structured, facetable metadata-accessibility, discoverability, navigability?  Is this a question about the very use/value/function of searchable repositories?

-Content that is designed to be available and accessible works better in a repository. Lack of preservation capable functionality?

-management and curation by library professionals with an eye toward permanance, assurances of best practices and pathways towards preservation

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?

-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.

-Manageable flexibility in looking after different types of digital material

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?

-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.

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?

-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 

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.

  • Why are we giving things away? (with regard to community contributions of many kinds, not just code)

If we give we also gain from what others are giving.  Giving can be of many different types.  Giving as a form of investment that acknowledge the return we would expect.

  • How do we know it will be around in 5 or 10 years?

-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)
    • 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)

Samvera has multiple open Interest and Working Groups contributing at different levels of the technology stack.  Work is managed in concert with other users to ensure a "one size fits all" approach.  Likewise, the Samvera Community has working groups that manage the community itself.

    • What is expected of a community member? in terms of time? resources?

-Active, participatory membership in a WG?  The Contribution Model WG is developing a recommendation that will be explicit about what the Community expects of Partners (and, conversely, what Partners get in return).  For Community members who are not (yet?) Partners we expect them to justify the term "Community member" by contributing back something.

    • Difference between Open Source and a Commercial product

-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?

-For newcomers to the community: Samvera Community Google Group and Slack #general.  For Partners: Samvera Partners Google Group and Slack # partners.  For Developers, Slack # dev.  For attendees at Samvera Connect, Slack # 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 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/...?
    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 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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