2026-01-08 Partner Call

Facilitator: @Heather Greer Klein

Note Taker: @Nick Steinwachs

Attendees

• @Nick Steinwachs

• @Eleni Castro

• @Margaret Mellinger

• @Alberto Martinez

• @Annamarie Klose

• @Chrissy Rissmeyer

• @Esmé Cowles

• @Juliet Hardesty

• @Eben English

• @Jessica McMillen

• @Kate Lynch

• @Jim Halliday

• @Jon Dunn

• @John Weise

• @Chris Awre

Agenda & Notes

1. Additions to the agenda?

   1. Need to end at 5 to the hour to leave a break before meeting with Apereo
      
      

2. Event dates

   1. Save the date for Samvera Europe meeting May 5th, London, hosted by CoSector alongside CoSector event

   2. Virtual Connect 2026 date selection - Feedback on May 12-13, 2026

      1. Looking for feedback on the date

   3. Midwest regional meeting in Indiana with hybrid Partner meeting

      1. Dodging spring breaks, other events commonly attended

      2. September?
         
         

3. FITS project - thoughts and feedback for team planning the transition

   1. Harvard recently announced that they will soon stop supporting the FITS project (https://harvard-lts.github.io/fits/). This is a file analysis toolset for digital repositories that is part of the Hyrax ingest workflow (Install the Full Hyrax Stack and Dependencies)

      1. Eben:

         1. Meeting in early december re: Harvard’s plans to discontinue support

         2. Not right away

         3. Considering the open preservation foundation

         4. December action items: reach out to OPF, see what they’d need to make it a viable thing to support.

         5. Andrew Woods is primary: OPF is working through the onboarding process with another project, also happens to have a Harvard affiliation.

         6. Looking for a letter of support to convey that there’s a significant community that stands to benefit and maintain it

         7. Harvard has scheduled another meeting for Jan 29, 2026(see below for link)

   2. December meeting notes 2025.12.11 FITS Transition Planning Meeting

   3. January 29th upcoming meeting 2026.01.29 FITS Transition Planning Meeting cont.
      
      
      

4. Discussion: How to support institutions and individuals doing independent evaluation and onboarding for Samvera platforms (facilitated by @Kate Lynch)

   1. Ongoing discussion around how to grow the community - partners + users

   2. Kate teaches a course on open repositories

      1. assignment was to propose a repository

   3. Feedback from folks in course:

      1. want to work with actual software

      2. some folks are in the process of replacing their repository / getting their first one stood up

   4. Opportunity: self-onboard better

   5. Looking for ideas for improving self-onboarding

      1. Hard to find demo sites

      2. Don’t know what to do once they get there.

      3. Making sure folks know they have permission to do things.

      4. Jon Dunn: Avalon sandbox site is easy to find, but need to request permission to submit things into the platform. Risk to content (copyrights, etc).

      5. Kate Lynch: Lightweight videos / walkthroughs / tutorials

      6. Nick Steinwachs:

         1. Generally improved / styled demo site with seeded data

         2. Improved bulk ingestion UX (sample CSV, feedback UI + validation)

      7. Jessica McMillen:

         1. Often people don’t have the files + data to test with. Having sample data was super-helpful.

      8. Kate Lynch: Signal boosting the sandbox (outreach) is a first step, plus seeded data that’s familiar. DSpace sandboxes have an insecure shared login that gets periodically flushed.

         1. Esmé - gold standard is single-file install. How easy is it to install a demo instance on your local?

      9. Annamarie Klose: Once you start talking Docker, it’s not easy for newcomers.

         1. I can mention it as SMIG. Some people might be willing to contribute examples.

         2. We [Samvera community] should populate more of the features, e.g. featured researcher, and collection information in the demo sites.

      10. Heather: There’s two extremes

          1. Ex: UB - did a ton of work up-front.

          2. Ex: Boilerplate form that’s the front-end of a procurement process.

      11. Jon Weise: I know not all are comfortable with AI, but I find it very helpful for a) learning documentation at my level of recommendation, and spinning things up that I don’t know how to spin up.  A user can tailor it to their situation as they go. NoteBookLM could be a good place to put lots of useful documentation, regenerate tutorials, and let people explore. Make the notebook public. From there, just keep the source docs up to date.

      12. Margaret Mellinger: That was going to be my question - who hosts /maintains … (in response to Nick S. saying Notch8 needs to step up their demo game.)
          
          

5. Development of a CNI OSS sustainability/shared staffing conversation or panel

   1. Chrissy Rissmeyer: It may not be the kind of shared staffing you mean, but always happy to talk about what it is like to deeply collaborate with another institution long term

6. Open Repositories online coming up

   1. Sunday, Jan 11, 2026is deadline for proposals

   2. Heather working with a lot of folks to submit for panels, talks.
      
      

7. Other Updates: 

   1. Notetaker for February 12th

      1. @Eleni Castro

   2. Please consider a demo or discussion at a 2026 Partner call

   3. Board meeting with Aprereo today

   4. Anything for the Samvera Board? (Standing item) 
      
      

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1U34o0ao5OX2T8DdR79s3Lc8WJofjZhgUN5-Dt_JyKKU/edit?usp=sharing

Date of next call: February 12th, 2026. Will include fiscal sponsor review update

Notetaker: