2021-01-08 Partner Call

Code of Conduct

We want Samvera Community to be a fun, informative, engaging event for all our partners and participants. We've got a few strategies to help make this happen:

1. 1. We encourage everyone to apply the Samvera community principles of openness, inquiry, and respect in their interactions at the event.

   2. We have officially adopted an Anti-Harassment Policy.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to community helpers . 

• Code of Conduct
• Samvera Participation Guide 

Date

08 Jan 2021

Facilitator: Richard Green & Heather Greer Klein

Note Taker: Chris Awre

Attendees

Heather Greer Klein

Robin Lindley Ruggaber

Richard Green

Stuart Kenny

Alicia Morris

Chris Awre

John Weise

Karen Cariani

Esmé Cowles

Maria Whitaker

Charlotte Nunes

Simeon Warner

Jon Dunn

Margaret Mellinger

Adam Wead

Agenda and notes

1. Any other items for the agenda? 
   There were no other items for the agenda
   
   
2. Demo of ScholarSphere from Penn State University Libraries

Seth Erickson, Research Data Librarian for Social Sciences at Penn State Libraries and Product Owner for ScholarSphere, gave a presentation on the development of ScholarSphere 4.0 over the past year, followed by a demo of some of the new functionality.  Key points raised were:
- As a reminder, ScholarSphere is Penn State's IR, and was originally implemented in 2012.  It facilitates self-deposit and is content agnostic.
- The previous version (3.0, built using Sufia) had become difficult to maintain and wasn't scalable in the ways currently needed.  It was also hard to integrate with other systems and missed some features that other repositories (e.g., Dryad) were providing.
- Version 4.0 is taking a cloud native approach to address scalability and has implemented APIs for integration.  A key development is the ability to version a work.  The development has also seen a refresh of associated repository policies.  Version 4.0 is a new tech stack that was migrated to - it is Ruby on Rails and uses Blacklight, but uses PostgreSQL instead of Fedora and has sought to use common tech elements as much as possible.  It is licensed using the MIT Licence.
- Seth demo'd the versioning functionality, as well as showing the need for an ORCID ID for any author not at Penn State (who will have their own local ID).  Content upload is straight to Amazon by default.  Penn State only access is an option for content that cannot be open.
- Questions:
- File versioning - the versioning functionality allows a work to be versioned by changing the file, but in-file edits are not recorded in this way.
- A separate homegrown Researcher Metadata Database uses OAuth to authenticate to ORCID and push metadata there.  This may be added to ScholarSphere, but the preferred route is through the RMD.  Other functionality using ORCID is planned.
- Fedora (4.7) was taken out of the stack as it was causing performance issues.  Penn State also had staff leave who took Fedora knowledge with them.

1. Community actions 
   1. Current Community Asks
      Heather reviewed the current Community Asks and encouraged everyone to review these and contribute where they could.  The current three are:
      - Input about items of interest that the Marketing WG can showcase as part of a tour round Samvera repositories
      - The Hyrax Maintenance WG work will be kicking off at the end of January and thanks were offered for all the contributions made towards this.  An additional 0.2FTE across developer/testing would be great if available
      - Ongoing input to the Roadmaps Alignment Group listing of roadmaps/plans is encouraged to facilitate sharing of effort and avoid duplication of effort 
   2. Wiki transition
      The Wiki transition was complete, with small tasks ongoing to finish tidying up and address minor wrinkles.  But it has been a smooth process overall.
2. Checking in on the purpose and frequency of this call – see Samvera Partner Calls for purpose and mechanics of the call
   1. Is the purpose still meeting your needs? Does it need to be updated?
   2. Are the mechanics of the call still valid? What is the best way to solicit Partner demos?
   3. Is 1x per month for 1 hour the right frequency and length?
      Key elements proposed for the Partner Calls were to maintain the monthly frequency to facilitate continuity of engagement, use the opportunity to discuss in greater detail items within the monthly newsletter Heather is now compiling, and to continue having demos, which were valued (and could expand to include different areas of work in libraries beyond repositories directly).
      Ideas/suggestions for demos should be forwarded to Heather to make arrangements for future months.
      
      
3. Anything to raise with the Steering Group (standing item)
   It was noted that Steering's Winter Retreat was upcoming this month.  There were no specific topics that Partners had to raise at this time.
   
   
4. A brief word from Richard
   Richard highlighted that this would be his last Partner call in the light of his retirement at the end of January.  He will still be engaging as he needs to (not least in the context of a retirement project to create a repository of maritime images) and his Hull email address will continue to be active for the time being.  Richard offered thanks for the fun he's had over the past 12.5 years involvement with the community and best wishes for the future, both of which were widely reciprocated by Partners.
   
   
5. Date of next call and Notetaker for next call:
   The next call will be on February 12th | Robin Ruggaber will act as notetaker