2026-02-12 Partner Call

Facilitator: @Heather Greer Klein

Note Taker: @Eleni Castro

Attendees

• @Esmé Cowles

• @Heather Greer Klein

• David Moles

• @Paul Walk

• @Nick Steinwachs

• @Jessica McMillen

• @John Weise

• @Annamarie Klose

• @Juliet Hardesty

• @Nicholas Mark Homenda

• @Nora Zimmerman

• @Stuart Kenny

• @Eleni Castro

• @Chris Awre

• @James Halliday

• @Kate Lynch

• @Christine Peterson

Agenda & Notes

• Additions to the agenda? No additions to the agenda.
  
  

• Improving the Bulk Import Experience for Hyrax and Hyku: Community-Funded Bulkrax Sprints

  1. A unique opportunity to do significant, community-requested work on Bulkrax in a short timeframe

  2. $13,000 remaining to get us to Phase 2. UNC Chapel Hill and Amigos have contributed already.

  3. Can be funded by requesting additional funds be added to your Partner dues invoice, if that would make contribution easier to arrange

  4. Notch8 have already started out on the 1st Phase of this work and are looking for additional funding to keep moving ahead beyond Phase 1 more quickly.

  5. Paul Walk: Bulkrax is a critical component in this stack and is wondering if this is the route that repos could use to migrate from another system to Hyku/Hyrax. David Moles believes that the upgrades would help by putting out this update.

     1. Nick S. is seeing this as more customer facing and primary motivation is to improve the overall bulk import experience but also nice that it will align with new users migrating into Hyku/Hyrax.

  6. Annemarie Klose: “Yes, as an end user, Bulkrax is critical to day-to-day work in Hyrax and Hyku.” and “CONTENTdm, for comparison, has a better importer based on what I recall from my work with it in the past.” “DSpace has a basic but functional importer.”

     1. Nick S. “What’s interesting is that, based on my research, this could be a potential differentiator from DSpace… Do you think the direction we’re heading would meaningfully set us apart (in a positive way)?”

     2. David Moles added that so does TIND.

• Fiscal Sponsorship change: Board recommendation, Partner votes, process and timeline

  • overview document with a reminder of how we got here; the benefits of this change; the major differences from our current arrangement; the process and timeline as it stand now; and FAQs.

  • We can predict changes to the Bylaws as far as removing OASIS Open language and adding in the fiscal sponsorship agreement as an appendix. We won’t be able to finalize changes until the Apereo side of the process is complete.

  • Request for a vote will go out after this call to designated Partner representatives. Will close in two weeks. Please feel free to ask question in the #partners slack channel!

    • Email will come from Heather for Partners to be filled in even if they missed this call and will keep everyone updated at our Partner meetings as we along.

  • Heather brought up that they are heavily involved integrated in the higher ed tech space and are global. Lots of benefits.

  • Changes at the top level: we would still be protected to move to a diff fiscal sponsor in case anything happens without being a legal entity anymore.

  • Questions/Comments

    • Nick: Would we no longer be the Samvera Foundation? Heather: We would be just called the Samvera Community.

    • Nick thinks this is a pretty trivial drawback.

    • Heather: We would transfer over our IP and would change the fiscal year. Further details nitty gritty still TBD. Wants to get this all transitioned by Jul 1, 2026but doesnt have a clear sense as to how quickly these can move but everyone is motivated to get this going.

      • Heather sees that this will take up a lot of their time but that partners/community will be getting regular updates. Doesn’t anticipate any issues with invoicing since Apereo is very familiar with higher ed invoicing.

    • Jessica asked about the agreement.

    • Nick S. “Currently drafting a mission / ethics policy for Notch8, which I can align with Apereo’s general mission.  Basically, stating that we believe a social good / public benefit approach can lead to a healthy business in which we enjoy working, and attract clients that are also good people.”
      
      

• Samvera Board Special Election - 2 seats to fill to reach the full 9 person Board

  • Nick S. asking about any conflicts of interest for nominating a partner. Heather said we have done this before.
    
    

• Samvera Partnership Review Working Group - will need a couple of current Partners interested in helping to review and make recommendations for the Partnership model. Note that any final changes would go to Partners for a vote.

• Heather will be doing outreach to recruit for current Partner, former Partner, and non-Partner representatives, and representation from Avalon, Hyrax, and Hyku implementers and service providers.

• Please add your name to the charter or reach out to Heather. We’d like to have a kick-off meeting within the next 4 weeks. Hoping to move this along quickly and update on our Partner calls.

• Outcome of this group would be a recommendation to the board and partners would be informed and could vote on the changes.

• Questions? No questions about this.
  
  

• Other Updates: 

  1. Notetaker for March 12th ? Chris Awre for March; and Jessica McMillen for April.

  2. Call for Proposals for Virtual Connect (May 12-13) going out next week

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

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

Date of next call: March 12th, 2026. Looking for topic facilitator, demo, etc.

Notetaker: