Samvera Virtual Connect 2021 Program

Day 1 -  Tuesday, April 20, 11am - 2pm Eastern Daylight Time

Time

Title

Abstract

Suggested Audience

Presenters

Recordings and slides

Time

Title

Abstract

Suggested Audience

Presenters

Recordings and slides

11:00-11:10

Welcome and Code of Conduct review

Welcome and review of the Samvera Code of Conduct

Everyone

Heather Greer Klein

Recording

11:10-11:30

It's Alive: Building a preservation-first repository

On St. Patrick's Day NU went live with our new digital collection repository and asset management tool prioritizing speed of ingestion and metadata updates.  We reframed the problem by working with end-users to look closely at workflows and prioritize solutions rather than any specific technology.  The resulting application ecosystem is extremely budget friendly and the architecture supports:

- Large ingestion of 4 gig tifs with derivates and preservation checks (10k works) in  ~ 1 hour
- 5k batch metadata updates ~5 minutes
- Round trip spreadsheet update (5k records in 5 minutes)
- Preservation dashboard / verification
- Local authority creation and updates

This presentation will discuss the process, what we learned, and how it relates to the Samvera community at large.

Developers & Managers

Michael B. Klein (Northwestern University)

Slides

Recording

11:30-11:40

Linking Hyrax with a people and organisation referential

The EHESS is a university dedicated to social and economical sciences in Paris. Many of our metadata are names of people (researchers, authors, photographers, politicians, musicians, etc.) or organisations (universities and schools, libraries, museums, laboratories, etc.).
In order to provide the highest level of accuracy during the data description, we decided to integrate an Identification Referential called IdRef.
This powerful tool, created by the ABES (the French librarians), is an ever-growing database made up of descriptions of people and institutions, to which French librarians are constantly adding.
The implementation of IdRef into Hyrax is a good example of what can be done to reach a higher quality of data description.

Developers, Managers, Librarians, Repository Managers

Maxence Gevaudan (EHESS Paris)

Recording

11:40-11:50

IIIF React Media Player (a component library)

IIIF React media player is an exportable collection of components. This component library is based on one of the previous implementations for a media player using a IIIF manifest(3.0 spec). The previous implementation was restructured and refactored in order to build a package, which exports multiple components instead of one single component. This gives a user the ability to use only the components providing the required functionality in their application.

Developers, Managers

Dananji Withana (Indiana University Libraries)

Slides

Recording

11:50 -12:00

Tales of a New Service Manager 

New to academic libraries, new to development, and new to service management - right after joining the Northwestern University Libraries Repository and Digital Curation team, the move to remote work afforded new opportunities to engage directly with the digital repository development process. I'll share some experiences and practices that are helping me grow into my role as a digital repository service manager. 

Service Owners/Managers, Project Managers

Veronica Robinson (Northwestern University)

Slides

Recording

12:00-12:10

Break

 

12:10-12:30

Features for Oral Histories in a Digital Collections app

The Science History institute has prepared hundreds of oral histories of scientists over several decades, comprising a valuable collection unique to us. To support this collection in a high-quality way, we developed custom features for housing transcripts and audio files in our Digital Collections. These features include: a bespoke custom front end for features from Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS) audio-synchronized transcripts; custom oral-history-specific metadata on the interviewee; and an integrated request workflow for the subset of content whose donor permissions don't allow entirely free access. This development has allowed us to retire a separate duplicative vendor-developed front-end application, for cost efficiencies. I'll give an overview of our custom developed features and the reasons we decided this approach made sense for us.

Developers, Product Owners

Jonathan Rochkind (Science History Institute)

Recording

12:30-12:55

Working & Interest Group Updates

Controlled Vocabularies Decision Tree Working Group
Hyrax Development Support & Engagement Working Group
Samvera Metadata Interest Group
Samvera Roadmaps Alignment Group
Samvera User Experience Interest Group

Everyone

Working & Interest Group Representatives

Recording

12:55-1:00

Break







 

1:00-1:20

Samvera Community Safety: An Update

Over the past year, there has been a concerted effort to formally review the Samvera Code of Conduct and the related policies and procedures in place to support community safety. We contracted with two independent third-party experts, Sage Sharp and Annalee Flower Horne, to train community members, to revise the Code of Conduct, and advise us on how best respond to reported incidents. This presentation will provide an overview of the outcomes of this work to date, including: Take-aways from the incident response training; Proposed changes to the Code of Conduct; Emerging process for incident response; Proposed changes to how community safety is supported by volunteers, including but not limited to the Samvera Helpers.

Everyone

Hannah Frost, Jessica Hilt, Simeon Warner

Recording

1:20 - 1:30

User-first development with Usability Tests 

While re-imagining a user-first development process and workflow, our team for the first time, incorporated Usability Tests into the development process.  We experimented with conducting multiple rounds of Usability Tests in collaboration with our Library's User Experience Librarian.  The experience was incredibly educational and made a substantial impact on our application's recent launch.  We'd like to share some "how tos" in taking the first steps forward with Usability Testing in your development workflow.

Managers, Developers, Designers, UX, General

Adam J. Arling & Frank Sweis (Northwestern University)

Recording

1:30-1:40

Local authorities dashboard: a use case in negentropy

The repository team at Northwestern University Libraries built a dashboard for creating and editing local controlled vocabulary entries in Meadow, our new digital repository and asset management system. One of our driving use cases was cleaning up free text descriptive metadata properties during our recent migration to the new system. I'll give a brief demonstration of the NUL Authorities Dashboard and show how the authorities are used by our metadata specialists in practice.

Developers, Metadata specialists

Brendan Quinn (Northwestern University)

Slides

Recording

1:40-2:00

Fedora 6.0: Bringing the Community Forward 

Fedora 6.0, the next major version of Fedora, is rapidly approaching full production release. The design and development of Fedora 6.0 has been guided by three principles: improve the digital preservation feature set, support migrations from all previous versions of the software, and improve performance and scale. This new version of the software will include a number of benefits and improvements that would be of interest to those within the Samvera community including things like enhanced performance and scale (including metrics gathering and reporting capabilities), Oxford Common File Layout (OCFL) transparent persistence, and a simple search API. Much of the work being done is also supported by an IMLS grant-funded project to pilot upgrades to Fedora 6.0 and create a toolkit for others in the community to use in their efforts to adopt and migrate to the latest version of the software.This presentation will provide a brief overview of the features outlined above, along with an update on the release timeline and ways to test the software.

Everyone

David Wilcox, Arran Griffith (Fedora)

Recording



Day 2 - Wednesday, April 21, 11am - 2pm Eastern Daylight Time

Time

Title

Abstract

Suggested Audience

Presenters

Recordings and slides

Time

Title

Abstract

Suggested Audience

Presenters

Recordings and slides

11:00-11:10

Welcome and Code of Conduct review

Welcome and review of the Samvera Code of Conduct

Everyone

Alicia Morris

Recording

11:10-11:30

Improving Group Decision Making: Or How to Use Spreadsheets to Make Meetings Fun*

Over the course of hiring several different people, I've iterated on a set of tools and processes for facilitating decision making. Other people have used this process, but it hasn't been circulated as best as it could. In this presentation, I'll share the tools, documentation, and additional ways I've used this collaborative decision making tool and process.

* - One colleague commented that the deliberate approach of this process made a meeting fun. Some restrictions may apply. Your mileage may vary.

Managers, Contributors, People who Make Decisions

Jeremy Friesen (University of Notre Dame)

Slides

Recording

11:30-11:40

Samvera’s Journey Toward a New Model for Fiscal Sponsorship

The Community’s existing fiscal sponsorship agreement was set to expire in mid-2021, and could not be renewed without a change to both the terms of the agreement and the rate charged for services. The Samvera Community recognized an opportunity to critically evaluate the Community’s fiscal and organizational needs, and to explore the options available in both the library open infrastructure community as well as the wider open source software landscape. This presentation will review the critical role of fiscal sustainability in open infrastructure communities; common models for this relationship; and the process Samvera used to evaluate fiscal and administrative needs against those options available in the open market. 

Everyone

Heather Greer Klein (Samvera)

 

Recording

11:40-11:50

Digital exhibitions from the institutional repository

The objective of this presentation is to describe a prototype of a "single-page application" that allows information to be gathered from a repository based on Samvera technology. It begins by detailing the process currently being carried out in the Daniel Cosío Villegas Library for the creation and display of its digital exhibits, based on the Omeka platform, emphasizing the disadvantages that it presents, subsequently, it is briefly detailed what the Samvera technology consists of and how it interacts with the prototype. one of the disadvantages of the previous process, as well as the advantages it represents in terms of computing resources.

Developers

Rodrigo Cuéllar Hidalgo & Eime Javier Cisneros Brito (El Colegio de México A.C.)

Recording

11:50-12:00

Break

 

 

 

 

12:00-12:20

Moving "in-person" access online during the pandemic

In the summer of 2020, Princeton University Library IT's highest priority was restoring "in-person" access critical to teaching and learning through nontraditional online access for items such as course reserves of in-copyright items, and group access to donor-restricted special collections. We initially conflated these two scenarios, but then realized they had different workflows, user management, and restriction types. This talk will detail the controlled digital lending and virtual reading room functionality we added to our Samvera repository, how we integrated restricted content in our discovery apps with IIIF, and the lessons we learned building and deploying these services.

Managers, Repository Managers, Anyone interested in increasing access to online resources

Kate Lynch and Esmé Cowles (Princeton University)

Slides

Recording

12:20-12:30

Hyrax Product Owner Update

An update on all things Hyrax, including the Hyrax Interest Group and Hyrax Maintenance Working Group.

Everyone

Julie Hardesty (Indiana University Libraries)

Recording

12:30-12:40

Hyku Product Owner Update

2021
Brought us Hyku 3.0
Grant projects progress
There's so much to be said about what's going on with Hyku that 17 syllables just isn't enough! Tune in here for the other several hundred.

Everyone

Kevin Kochanski (Notch8)

Slides

Recording

 

12:40-12:45

Avalon Product Owner Update

An update on Avalon users and development activities.

Everyone

Jon Cameron (Indiana University Libraries)

Recording

12:45-12:50

Break

 

 

 

 

12:50-1:20

Working Group Updates

Samvera Marketing Working Group – Chris Awre (Univeristy of Hull)

Samvera Branch Renaming Working Group – Kate Lynch (Princeton University) - Slides

Hyrax-Valkyrie Development Working Group – tamsin johnson (University of California, Santa Barbara)

Everyone

Working Group Representatives

Recording

1:20-1:40

Expanding Hyku’s Versatility with Custom Themes

Hyku's multi-tenancy allows for a broad range of use-cases beyond the original IR focus. However, a drawback to Hyku is the is the limitations on customizing the user interface for individual tenants, which is a deterrent to institutions with different use cases. Recent work for the PALNI/PALCI project has expanded the existing appearance panel features with the ability to add custom themes. We will show you how custom theming was implemented, as well as show you how with a few simple steps, you can add your own theme to Hyku either for your own project or to be added into Hyku for other community members.

Hyku application managers, developers and people interested in Hyku

Lea Ann Bradford & April Rieger (Notch8)

Recording

1:40-1:50

Advancing Hyku Year Two Project Update

Join a Year Two project update for the Advancing Hyku collaborative project, which aims to support the growth of green open access through institutional repositories. The deliverables of the project are to introduce significant structural improvements and new features to the Samvera Community's Hyku platform. The project partners are University of Virginia Library, Ubiquity Press and the British Library, with funding from Arcadia, a charitable fund of philanthropists Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. The project began October 2019 and is scheduled to conclude with a rollout of the Advanced Hyku platform community-wide after February 2022. In this Year Two update, the project team will introduce the community input for the feature developments and highlight ongoing collaborations at Samvera community level. https://advancinghyku.io/

Samvera community; System suppliers, especially Samvera services; Repository managers; Librarians and administrators looking for hosted repository solutions; Scholarly communications librarians

Ellen Catz Ramsey (University of Virginia)

Brian Hole (Ubiquity Press)

Ilkay Holt (British Library)

Slides

Recording

1:50-2:00

Serverless Functions: How a tiny experiment became our best work

Weeks before we went live with our new digital collections repository and asset management system, we hit a wall with scaling. Ingestion was working well, but performance was nowhere near where we wanted to be. We faced a decision:

  • Scale vertically to very large container instances ($$$)

  • Switch to a lambda based approach and learn fast Going in a new direction at the last minute seemed risky and made us uncomfortable... Can you guess which way we went?

Developers, Managers

Karen Shaw (Northwestern University)

Slides

Recording