Samvera Outreach & Engagement Working Group

Scope & Objectives

As an active community supporting those with common interests in the development of solutions for the management of digital collections, Samvera seeks to foster engagement in this area.  This engagement takes many forms and the community seeks to support those as useful.  One specific key way in which engagement takes place is outreach through Samvera meetings, topical conferences, and other events and meetings of relevance.  The aim of this outreach is to communicate and promote Samvera to the different audiences we work with and who we would like to reach.  This Working Group will look to facilitate and support outreach and engagement through a range of activities relevant to the need at hand.  This will include, but not be limited to:

  • Identify the key messages Samvera needs to put out to different audiences and share these for community use

  • Identify the channels and events that can be used to communicate about Samvera, e.g., discussion lists, conferences, commercial partners, professional bodies, etc.

  • Support the delivery of Samvera events as appropriate

  • Create and maintain suitable outreach materials for use at conferences ("stuff") and within institutions.

  • Maintain oversight of Samvera's web presence and ensure consistency of presentation and content

  • Understand and develop the sectors that Samvera might look to engage with to help differentiate the outreach required for these, e.g., libraries, museums, media organisations, university presses, grant funders, etc.

The Working Group will operate as a standing group, generating sub-groups as appropriate to focus on specific areas of work.

Members

Please add your name to this list if you are interested in participating in this area of contribution to the Samvera Community.  Those with experience of outreach, engagement and related communications and promotion of library and repository services are especially welcome.

Chris Awre (University of Hull)

Karen Cariani (WGBH)

Alicia Morris (Tufts University)

Heather Greer Klein - Samvera Community Manager, facilitator

Robin Ruggaber (University of Virginia)

Molly Reed (PALNI)

Outreach Materials

The following are downloadable and can be used/printed as required for distribution.  They are distributed under a CC-BY 4.0 licence.

Institutional profile template (May 2022) - for sharing of Samvera activity via the Samvera website

Conference presentations/workshops

Presentation templates

Leaflet - version 4, with Samvera Vision (March 2020)

Communications support

Communications Logic Model (PDF)

Working Group working documents

Brainstormed list of outreach ideas

Resources

 How to Market an Open Source Project - Linux Foundation  - a link to a general summary of marketing in an open source context.  Please add other resources that cover options we could consider.

IIIF as exemplar of website and outreach

Meeting Times & Communication Channels

The Working Group meets via Zoom every third Wednesday at 11AM Eastern/8AM Pacific time. There is also a Slack channel available to support communication between meetings.

Previous meetings of the Group’s predecessor, the Samvera Marketing WG are available.