Samvera Solution Bundles

Owned by Bill Branan
Last updated: Feb 23, 2024 by Heather Greer Klein
3 min read

Solution Bundles are applications designed to solve a common need in a generalized yet customizable way, with minimal development effort required for implementation. Solution bundles are often collaborative efforts and have communities of users and contributors from different institutions who support ongoing development. There are currently four Samvera applications offered as solution bundles. In addition to solution bundles, there are many Samvera applications and components from which to draw inspiration or utilize code (see examples).

Self-deposit Institutional Repositories

Hyrax

Github: https://github.com/samvera/hyrax

Website: http://hyr.ax/about/

Origin: Hyrax was created through the consolidation of the Sufia and CurationConcerns gems (see below). (Sufia was originally developed at Penn State University as a shareable generalization of their Samvera-based research repository application, ScholarSphere.) Hyrax, and Sufia and CurationConcerns before it, has been maintained by a growing number of Samvera community developers (with over 80 contributors as of March of 2017. Hyrax is exemplary of Samvera development that has had wide implementation and code contributions to become a truly community-driven, -supported, and -maintained solution bundle.

Sufia  

Github: https://github.com/projecthydra/sufia

Origin: Derived from ScholarSphere which was developed by Penn State.

Contact for more information: hydra-tech@googlegroups.com

Community and product direction:

Sufia is the basis for Penn State’s ScholarSphere, WGBH’s HydraDAM, George Washington University’s GW Scholarship, and University of Washington’s DRUW, to name some of the known instances. The Sufia code base is included in the officially supported and maintained Hydra gems.

Sufia has a growing number of implementers and is under active new feature development to support Fedora 4 and the community defined work-based model -  Hydra:: Works.  

Distinctive features (also see README)

  • rails engine for creating a web application for ingest, curation, search, and display of digital assets.

  • file based approach to object creation

  • supports any file type

  • Fedora 4 support

  • Version control for deposited files

  • User profiles with activity streams

  • Single-use links

  • Usage statistics graphs in the UI

  • Integration with cloud storage providers

  • Full-text indexing and search

  • Proxy deposit and transfers of ownership

Curate

Github: https://github.com/projecthydra-labs/curate

Origin: Created based on Sufia’s models originally by Notre Dame. In addition, Curate was under active collaborative development for many months by The University of Notre Dame, Northwestern University, Digital Curation Experts, University of Cincinnati, University of Virginia and Indiana University.

Contact for more information: hydra-tech@googlegroups.com

Community and product direction:

Curate is the basis for Notre Dame’s CurateND and the University of Cincinnati’s Scholar@UC. Collaborative efforts on this project have shifted to focus on Hydra::Works and likely an eventual merger with Sufia.

Distinctive features:

 

Worthwhile

Github: https://github.com/projecthydra-labs/worthwhile

Origin: Created by Digital Curation Experts based on the Curate Gem.

Contact for more information: hydra-tech@googlegroups.com

Community and product direction:

Worthwhile is the basis for Case Western’s new Hydra repository, Digital Case (currently in beta). Worthwhile is under active development by Digital Curation Experts to include support for Fedora 4. Worthwhile is likely to merge with Sufia when Hydra::Works are supported.

Distinctive features:

  • Stripped down fork of Curate with updated versions of Blacklight, Bootstrap and Hydra

  • Work-based model for content where an intellectual item can have multiple files.

  • Expanded leasing and embargo support

Media Repository Solution

Avalon Media System

Github: https://github.com/avalonmediasystem

Project website:  http://www.avalonmediasystem.org/ 

Origin: Collaborative project between Indiana University Libraries and Northwestern University Library.

Contact for more information:  http://www.avalonmediasystem.org/connect

Community and product direction:

Avalon has been funded in part by multiple grants from IMLS and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, led by project leads Indiana University Libraries and Northwestern University Library. Avalon is the basis for Indiana’s Media Collections Online and Northwestern’s A+V Repository and has a growing number of implementers and contributors at other institutions. See the Avalon Release Road Map for information on upcoming features.

Distinctive features:

End-user functionality

  • Faceted discovery for search and browse

  • Video and audio playback in browsers or on mobile devices

  • Stream-level security

  • Ability to embed media player in other websites

  • Persistent URLs

  • RTMP and HTTP streaming, Flash and HTML5-based player

Collection management

  • Interactive or batch uploading of media files

  • MODS metadata schema

  • Private collection dropboxes

  • A hierarchical model for permissions that supports a flexible approach to batch collections-based content management

  • Customized thumbnails by taking a “snapshot” or specifying a timepoint

  • Direct import of previously transcoded derivatives

  • Avalon transcoding for multiple quality derivatives

  • Let staff select multiple items and publish, unpublish, delete, set access permissions, assign to collection

Integration with other enterprise systems

  • Red5 and Adobe media servers

  • Local authentication services (CAS, LDAP and others, using OmniAuth)

  • Learning management systems, via the Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) standard

  • Support for LDAP group access control

  • Support for persistent URL systems (PURL, Handle)

  • Master files: leave, delete, or rename/move after transcoding

Installation

  • Easy installation and configuration via a virtual machine image and other methods

  • Fully-transparent integration testing using travis-ci.org- every commit and pull request triggers a build

  • Configuration approach for easier customization where possible

  • Latest versions of Hydra, Blacklight, Bootstrap