Issue 1, December 2016

Owned by Bill Branan
Feb 23, 2024
3 min read

Online: http://conta.cc/2kGtMZI (Dec 15, 2016)

Hydra-In-A-Box Project Update

Vol 1, Issue 1, December 2016

An email newsletter from the Hydra-in-a-Box team with news and information about community progress, plans, and pilots

ANNOUNCING: HYKU

The Hydra-In-A-Box Project team knew early on that the repository product needed to have a distinct name (What’s in a Name? The Many Facets of Hydra-In-A-Box). We wanted a name that would relate to the Hydra theme, but that would also be distinct and new. Over the course of 2016, we gathered suggestions from the community and had a lot of fun brainstorming (you should see our Slack discussions!). The idea for the name "Hyku" came about during a Cramer family trip to the Grand Canyon. By September, "Hyku" had made it to the project team's short list, and after an internal project team vote, it was declared the winner.

The new name meets all the key criteria: short, easy to pronounce, starts with "Hy", will not be confused with existing technology products, alludes to values we all hold dear—creativity, nature—and lends itself to playfulness. We can actually write haikus about it and riff on the name in fun ways for service marketing and promotion, e.g., Hykurate, Hykurry, Hykurumba… We hope you like "Hyku" as much as we do!
 

THANKS TO OUR COMMUNITY

We have made significant progress towards releasing a feature-filled version of Hyku with code contributions from 6 additional institutions beyond the core partners. Your ongoing help will ensure a successful 2017 launch of Hyku—designed to meet your needs now and into the future.

As plans for the launch of Hyku pilot programs are completed, we will be in touch to learn more about how you would like to be involved in testing early releases of Hyku, and in piloting HykuDirect, our hosted repository service. Please be in touch with any questions at hyku-contact@googlegroups.com.

A special thank you to the Hydra community institutions that have contributed so much to developing Hyku and the software on which it depends: Penn State University; Northwestern University; University of Michigan; University of Notre Dame; Oregon State University; Indiana University; and the Chemical Heritage Foundation.

ROADMAP REPORTS

•  Technical Sprint Demos, by Mike Giarlo

Development on the Hydra-In-A-Box repository application continues, and here are a series of demonstrations on a variety of topics including improvements to the administrative dashboard, in-browser editing of the about page, and internationalization work supporting language switching. 

Watch the Hydra-in-a-Box demo playlist here.

• DPLA’s Aggregation Tooling Update, by Gretchen Gueguen

DPLA's motivation for participating in the Hydra-in-a-Box project is twofold: First, DPLA has a desire to create better tools for our partners at Hubs and contributing institutions to create and maintain digital collections. To this end, we are partners in the development and planning of the repository application. Secondly, DPLA is working on improving DPLA’s aggregation software and generalizing it for wider adoption. On our project blog, we go into further depth on DPLA's participation in the project. In addition, take a look at this high-level diagram of our aggregation tools from a recent DLF presentation.

•  Back to school with Hydra-in-A-Box, by Hannah Frost, Gary Geisler

This is the first in a series of blog posts highlighting the personas produced in our design process, each representing a typical user of the Hyku repository and embodying a number of use cases that Hyku aims to fulfill.  Read the article here.

• Preserving Public Library Treasures, by Hannah Frost, Gary Geisler

In this post, investigators review key needs that a typical Digital Projects Coordinator for a large regional consortium of public libraries would have. Read more here.

• Not Just for Libraries and Archives, by Hannah Frost, Gary Geisler

In this design persona, we explore the real-life, hard work of researching and evaluating available repository products in the marketplace and get a look at the online resources and training opportunities used in the evaluation process. Read more here.

• Filling the Gaps, by  Hannah Frost, Gary Geisler

A persona representing a digital collections librarian working in a large municipal public library surfaces three key advances in the Hydra-in-a-Box project that fill notable gaps in the overall Hydra landscape. Read more here.

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