Category: Project Hydra

Duoc UC, Chile, becomes the 27th Hydra Partner

(taken from the Hydra Partner List-serv)

[English version below]

Estamos encantados de anunciar que Duoc UC (http://www.duoc.cl), en Santiago de Chile, se ha convertido en el más reciente Hydra Socio formales, y nuestro primer socio en América Latina. Duoc ha estado trabajando con Hydra para construir la “Biblioteca Digital Patrimonial” (http://loncofilu.cl), un repositorio digital de planos arquitectónicos, fotografías, planes de restauración y documentos históricos relacionados con los edificios históricos más preciados de Chile, y que representa el trabajo producido por los estudiantes de la Escuela de Construcción Duoc UC. Para el 2015 están planeando el desarrollo de dos repositorios adicionales basados Hydra que se centrarán en la recogida de proyectos de títulos  de estudiantes y de audio y producciones visuales de la Escuela de Comunicación.

En su carta de intención, Duoc dice que se han comprometido no sólo a la construcción de más proyectos con Hydra, sino también para la construcción de una comunidad de Hydra en América Latina mediante la traducción de la documentación en talleres españoles y explicaciones por otras instituciones de América Latina interesados en la construcción de repositorios de Hydra.

Bienvenidos, Duoc UC!

We are delighted to announce that Duoc UC (http://www.duoc.cl), in Santiago, Chile, has become the latest formal Hydra partner, and our first partner institution in Latin America. Duoc has been working with Hydra to build the “Heritage Digital Library” (http://loncofilu.cl), a digital repository of architectural drawings, photographs, restoration plans and historical documents related to the most precious historic buildings in Chile, and representing work produced by the students of Duoc’s Faculty of Construction. In 2015 they are planning to develop two additional repositories based on Hydra that will focus on the collection of student thesis projects and audio and visual productions from their Faculty of Communication.

In their letter of intent, Duoc says they are committed not only to building more projects with Hydra, but also to building a Hydra community in Latin America through the translation of documentation into Spanish and offering workshops to other Latin American institutions interested in building Hydra repositories.

Welcome, Duoc UC!

ScholarSphere Conference at Yale University Library

Yale University Library and Yale ITS are pleased to sponsor a conference and public lecture on ScholarSphere, a software project developed at Penn State University, based on the same open-source Hydra/Fedora framework in use at YUL.

Yale University Library and ITS are investigating the possible adoption of this solution to enable Yale faculty and researchers to self-archive their own digital content in a managed, secure repository for controlled or open dissemination as well as for their own use. Our speakers will talk about the ScholarSphere project both from a technical perspective and as a service model. More information on the ScholarSphere website here.

Speakers:

Patricia Hswe, Digital Content Strategist and Head, ScholarSphere User Services at Penn State University
Daniel Coughlin, Ph.D. Candidate at Penn State University

via Yale University Library News: ScholarSphere Conference Archives.

Avalon Meeting Notes for Nov 24

We had a very productive meeting with three guests: Jon Dunn, Project Director, Indiana University; Mark Notess, Product Owner, Indiana University; Julie Rudder, Product Owner, Northwestern University.

The day started with an introduction to Avalon Media Systems in the Library Lecture Hall which included demonstrations of the work of Indiana and Northwestern who very recently released their first Avalon collections to the public. Powerpoint from the presentation is attached here: Yale Avalon Conference This lecture was video taped but sound is lacking, please contact michael.friscia@yale.edu for access.

Later in the day a smaller group convened to have a technical discussion about the future roadmap of Avalon. A recent poster that gives a very high level view can be seen here: RudderAvalon2. I am hoping to acquire a copy of the powerpoint presentation which has bullet lists of all the planned work that will go into version 3.2 through 4.0.

While we are still in the discussion stages of a project to bring Avalon up at Yale, two of the most important features for us include integration with Fedora 4 and possible integration of the backend transcoding processes into Sufia (Penn State has a version of Sufia called ScholarSphere). Our goal would be to integrate the two Hydra applications together so that audio and video files loaded into the self archiving product, Sufia, would take advantage of all the features of the Avalon Media System.

In addition, we discussed many topics including scaling Avalon so that it could transcode more than one file at a time, use RDF for describing complex relationships between multiple files/tracks and digital preservation.

 

 

Hydra Repository Now 3-Lock Data Compliant

The underlying storage infrastructure in use by Yale University Library’s Hydra repository is now 3-Lock data compliant.  Data and information at Yale is classified into three different tiers to categorize data security (more here).  3-Lock data can include things like Social Security numbers, credit card numbers, trade secrets, medical records, tax records, grades for assignments and courses, passport numbers, Veterans Administration data, and bank account numbers.  This upgrade is intended to meet the needs of units across the Library depositing material, and in particular units that are interested in the storage of digital personal papers that may contain sensitive content.  Thanks to Steve DeGroat and John Coleman of the Design & Quality Assurance team within Yale ITS Infrastructure Services.

Tufts University Becomes 25th Hydra Partner

Tufts University officially became the 25th Hydra partner on November 18, 2014. The full list of partners and Hydra adopters wishing to be publicly recognized may be viewed here: Hydra Partners.

In addition, I wanted to provide a link to the November Partner Phone call notes. Some highlights below:

  • The Hydra Steering group elected two new members: Jon Dunn, Indianna University and Michael Giarlo, Penn State University.
  • The Steering group will undertake a process to draft a set of bylaws for governance of the project given its rapid growth.
  • The Steering group is also beginning to look at contract services for banking and other legal activities such as trademark and intellectual property.
  • Significant expansion of Hydra adoption in Europe was reported as well as a successful Hydra UK event at the University of Hull.
  • Hydra had excellent presence and reception at DLF in Atlanta this past October.
  • DuraSpace conducted a Fedora 4 webinar which is now available online.
  • A proposal for formalizing the creation of Hydra special interest groups is near ratification.
  • The Hydra Archivists Working Group (HAWG) has reformed under the new leadership of Ben Goldman, Penn State University.
  • Stanford announced ArcLight as a formal project that is kicking off and seeking partnerships for planning and development. In short, ArcLight is an effort to build a Blacklight-based environment to support discovery and digital delivery of information in Archives. Which also includes integration with ArchivesSpace and EAD support.
  • Hydra expansion into South America is underway and several universities (wishing to remain anonymous at this time) are beginning Hydra development. Another major milestone is the work they are taking on to translate all of the Hydra documentation written in English into Spanish.