Scope & Objectives

The Samvera BrowseEverything Interest Group has been formed in response to a community need to support the maintenance and active development of the BrowseEverything Gem.  BrowseEverything is a Ruby library which provides Ruby on Rails applications with a user interface through which to upload files (or cloud storage resources) to said application.  The mechanism used for persisting these resources is not provided by the Gem itself, and hence, BrowseEverything should be flexible enough for any Ruby on Rails content repository.  Further, the Gem also provides a software API through which contributors and maintainers can develop plugins (termed “providers”) for supporting additional cloud storage services (e. g. Dropbox or Google Drive).

As this Gem is currently considered a Samvera Core Component and serves as a dependency of the Hyrax solution bundle, this Interest Group shall serve as organizing body through which to prioritize security updates, solutions for known problems, and requests for improvement to this Gem.  Hosting discussions for improvements to the user experience for the Gem, as well as improvements for the software API used in developing providers, also lies within the scope for this Interest Group. Further, given that a number of Gem dependencies provide access to cloud storage services outside of the Samvera community for BrowseEverything, this group shall also provide a schedule through which to synchronize with the life cycle of those Ruby libraries.

In order to accomplish these goals, we have drafted a series of proposals, from which shall be derived a roadmap.  Please find drafted proposals in this working Google Doc.

Meeting Times & Communication Channels

Meeting Times

Currently there are no regularly scheduled meeting times.  The inaugural meeting for this Interest Group has been scheduled for 05/14/19 at 12:00PDT/15:00EDT/19:00UTC, and the schedule for future meetings shall be determined at that time.

All meetings are currently planned to be held using Zoom (https://zoom.us/), at the URL https://princeton.zoom.us/j/7739591625

Updates to Community

Updates and announcements will be sent to samvera-community and samvera-tech mailing lists.  Informal discussions shall be held in the #browse-everything Samvera Slack Channel.

Members

At least three organizations must be represented in a Samvera Interest Group.  Anyone may be part of an interest group with or without a CLA, as there are no deliverables from the group.  If you want to be listed as a member, please add your name to the list below.

Chair

• James Griffin (Princeton University Library) (Core Component Product Owner)

Members

• Michael B. Klein (Northwestern University) 
• Randall Floyd (Indiana University)
• christina chortaria (Princeton University Library)
• Thomas Scherz  (University of Cincinnati)
• New members are welcome please!

Meeting Notes

• 08/27/19
• 06/25/19
• 05/14/19