Metadata Call 2026-01-27

Time: 2:00pm-3:00pm Eastern / 1-2 pm Central / 11 am-12 pm Pacific

Community Notes: Samvera Metadata Interest Group Meeting: 2026 Rolling MinutesPreview

Moderator(s):  Annamarie Klose

Notetaker: Emma Beck

Attendees:

• @Emma Beck - University of Louisville

• @Heather Greer Klein - Samvera

• @Benjamin Riesenberg - U. of Oregon

• @Jessica McMillen - WVU

• Steve McDonald, Tufts University

• Patrick Burden, WVU

• @Rachel Jacobson, Georgetown University

• @Sarah Cogley, University at Buffalo

• @Sarah Proctor Notch8

• @Christine Peterson, CPC

• @Nick Steinwachs, Notch8

Agenda:

• Samvera Updates

  • Roadmaps alignment group - meeting monthly now instead of biweekly. Focusing on the cross platform planning. 

  • Hyku and Hyrax leadership are meeting more regularly now

  • Rob moving into the Technical coordinator role for the year

  • Outreach and engagement group is looking for community stories that can be shared in blog posts and wider

• IIIF Conference 2026, 2026 Online Meeting  

  • Going virtually this week

  • Lightning talk “IIIF for Archives,” https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1_-3bXSGICbTNCPSj1UEBKPvulxxEnFwpWICw-oSHWA4 - Greg Weideman, University of Albany (Hyrax user), SUNY, ArcLight Integration Project 

• Bulk importer - Bulkrax

  • https://samvera.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/hyku/pages/3572826114/Bulk+Import+Improvements+Bulkrax

  • Bulkrax is critical for Hyku and Hyrax users, so trying to work and build momentum in developing a better experience

  • Trying to co-development the experience

  • Trying to provide real-time feedback 

  • This work will go into bulkrax so both Hyku and Hyrax will both benefit

  • Gift in kind dev hours are welcome to be discussed but likely would work best as part of a group instead of more one-off

  • Financially can be flexible either directly to Notch8 or through Samvera

• Open Discussion

  • WVU - Patrick

    • Eyeing and working on Questioning Authority (QA)

    • Getting 80% into a collection and vocab that works fine, the remaining use a different a vocabulary or would need to use local vocab

    • Nora Zimmerman at Lafayette College has done a lot of work with it, including a presentation and paper

      • Article: Zimmerman, N. (2023). User Study: Implementation of OCLC FAST Subject Headings in the Lafayette Digital Repository. Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 61(5–6), 579–589. https://doi.org/10.1080/01639374.2023.2207566 

      • Recording from her demo to SMIG - https://drive.google.com/file/d/13vsNfTmzBQcd0icLcoPRFwYiGPny13fb/view 

    • IU has also implemented some version of QA

    • Somewhere in Minnesota has been interested in this, could be utilized for reparative description work as well 

    • WVU use case is not unique case in how they would use QA. This use case is how most would utilize the system. A similar feature is available in CONTENTdm

    • Would having a user interface help to push it forward - can make it easier to market to those who are looking to migrate. UI can lead to better maintainability 

    • QA works very well on fields that don’t need multiple sources 

    • Controlled vocab documentation: https://github.com/samvera/hyku/blob/main/docs/controlled-vocabularies.md

• February will focus on accessibility

  • OSU will discuss the work they’ve been doing

  • Tufts has been playing with AI to improve or augment OCR transcription, etc.

  • Buffalo will also share 

  • Patrick at WVU has a doc of things they have been working on in regards to accessibility 

  • Thinking through what Hyrax/Hyku should be doing vs what should be human generated 

• Future meeting topics

  • Demos - let us know if you’re interested