Materials from Samvera Connect 2018. The conference attracted some 170 people from 60 institutions to the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. This collection contains slide decks from presentations and panel sessions, posters from the Poster Reception, photographs and more.
Since its inception in 2008, Samvera (previously the Hydra Project) has had a number of logos, both for the Community itself and for its various initiatives. Most of these logos have had a serious purpose, some have been more flippant. Most of them have, at one time or another, been available on our sought-after hex stickers. We've tried to gather them here and provide some context for each. We've also tried to track down some of the marketing materials and artifacts they were used on. Each year we commission a new design for our conference t-shirt. You'll also find a record of those here!
What is Samvera Connect? Samvera Connect (formerly Hydra Connect) is a chance for the Samvera Community to gather in one place at one time, with an emphasis on synchronizing efforts, technical development, plans, and community links. The meeting program is aimed at existing users, managers and developers and at new folks who may be just "kicking the tires" on Samvera and who want to know more. Samvera advertises this yearly conference with the slogan "as a Samvera Partner or user, if you can only make it to one Samvera meeting this academic year, this is the one to attend! " This collection holds sub-collections of materials from each of these annual conferences.
For Hydra Connect 2016, the local organizers took the project's basic logo and extended it. It was used on large display screens adjacent to the conference's main auditorium.
Two or so years into the Hydra project, around 2010, an on-line demonstrator was produced for the emerging software. The product was called Hydrangea. It proved difficult to keep up to date at a time of rapid development and was soon dropped - but it was in use long enough to get its own logo.
The team that founded the Hydra Project met several times in the fall of 2008 at the University of Virginia. At their meeting in December of that year the name 'Hydra' was coined. Later that same day, a hydra toy was spotted, and subsequently purchased, in a local shop - this became part of the first design used on the project's documents and presentations.
Samvera's annual Connect conference was held on-line because of the COVID-19 pandemic. A design had been created in anticipation of t-shirts at a face-to-face conference but it was used, instead, as the conference logo. 'Souvenirs' bearing the design were available via an on-line shop.
Samvera circulated a "Season's Greetings" card for the first time in December 2020. It features the Samvera tree festooned with decorative lights and incorporates in the winter scene the logos for Samvera's major software items.
A presentation at Connect 2018 updating delegates on the recommendations of Samvera's Governance Working Group. A video recording of this session is available at the 'Related URL' below.
An update to delegates at Samvera Connect 2018 about Samvera's Hyrax software. A video recording of this session is available at the 'Related URL' below.
Avalon will demonstrate how an initial plan to re-architect Avalon Media System utilizing the Hyrax stack has paired with efforts to ensure greater sustainability of both Avalon and Samvera as framework and community. Following that goal, the past year the Avalon team has made terrific strides toward the development of Avalon 7, in part through community collaborative work with Hyrax and Samvera teams. Additionally, we'll cover work aimed at preservation and scaled hosting of Avalon, as well as a range of activities including IIIF development for audiovisual media, collaborations with Avalon users, new features such as OHMS integration, our participation in community interest and working groups, and our efforts at outreach to find and assist new and potential users. A video recording of this session is available at the 'Related URL' below. and Presentation to delegates at Samvera Connect 2018 described thus
A presentation updating delegates at Samvera Connect 2018 about work on the Valkyrie gem. A video recording of this session is available at the 'Related URL' below.
Samvera Partners must sign a formal one page Letter of Agreement (LoA) in support of the formal and legal Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) signed by the Steering Group in April 2012. A composite document comprising the 2012 MoU, amendments made to it in 2018 to reflect the name change from Hydra to Samvera, changes made in 2019 to reflect governance changes in the Community, a version of the MoU showing the effect of these amendments, and a blank Letter of Agreement are in this downloadable document.
Contributors to the Samvera codebase require the consent of their institution or organization and to give this, the employer must sign a Corporate Contributor License Agreement. This is the downloadable form.
The paper lays out the current state of Samvera, in terms of its core software and the underpinning architecture. To set the software in context, the paper describes the Samvera community and its organizing structures. The White Paper aims to provide a useful introduction to those new to Samvera, and to act as a positioning document for those wanting to understand where Samvera is at. Finally it provides a framework for navigating the future.
A presentation given at Samvera Connect 2019 described thus and This presentation will cover the initial work to move the University of Michigan’s Deep Blue Documents repository from DSpace to Hyrax on Samvera and also merge it with the U-M data repository, Deep Blue Data, which is already on Hyrax. Deep Blue contains more than 120,000 items and has been around on DSpace since 2006. The Deep Blue Data repository started in 2016. Presenters will discuss steps taken so far to migrate and merge the repositories, including creating a minimum viable product (MVP) list, testing migration, addressing challenges so far, collaborating between IT and service providers, and determining next steps.
A preliminary understanding of geospatial metadata An elementary understanding of linked geospatial metadata Practical metadata modeling for Hyrax An introduction to RDF Graph stores for linked spatial data Methods for analyzing spatial linked data as RDF Graphs This workshop aims to provide a set of overviews and technical exercises which shall provide participants with an understanding of linked geospatial data, and what role it could serve within a Samvera repository application. The objective of the exercises will be to provide participants with experience modeling geospatial metadata for Samvera repository resources. Building upon this, an understanding of how this linked geospatial metadata may be indexed for content discovery, or exported into separate platforms for analysis, shall be demonstrated. As much of this work is derived from the undertakings of the Geo. Predicates Working Group, striving to remain aligned with larger community web standards (such as those published by the W3C) should be considered the proper context for any practical usage of linked geospatial metadata. and Slides from a workshop given at Samvera Connect 2019 and described thus
Participants will leave with ideas and methods for how to receive, prioritize, and plan multiple concurrent Library IT projects by taking into consideration the complexity, cost, and impact This half-day hands-on workshop will introduce participants to Michigan’s “Front Door” request intake and cycle planning process. At Michigan, we have designed a cycle planning process to gather requests of all kinds, rate and review, and finally, assign resources as appropriate. The workshop is intended to be a simulation of the cycle planning process from intake to resource planning exercise. The participants will get a feel of how requests are rated and reviewed for cost, complexity, and impact. We will be sharing the tools and templates used at Michigan for reviewing the requests, planning the cycle, and assessing the works’ progress throughout the cycle. and Slides from a workshop given at Samvera Connect 2019 and described thus
Understand what Samvera is and how to participate Understand how to use Samvera Understand the value of Samvera Samvera is a community, a set of tools, and a collection of ready-to run and hosted applications to help build a digital repository for your institution. The community drives the specification and development of sustainable open source technology and honing best practices for managing digital content. This workshop will provide an on-boarding and general entrée to the Samvera community and solutions for non-coders. The first part will provide an overview of Samvera solutions, hosting options and the community – what is it, why is it different? It will showcase applications solving a diverse set of needs and organizations, and discuss the how the community at large works to enable these. The second part will give a general technical overview designed for a non-technical audience. The resources needed to maintain and contribute to a hosted or custom Samvera solution will be discussed, resources that exist to get started will be highlighted plus how to contribute to the community technically and non-technically. The final part will discuss value and how to pitch Samvera and get institutional support. It will discuss the advantages of being part of the community and how that strengthens the sustainability of the tools, the applications, and the community overall. and Slides from a workshop given at Samvera Connect 2019 and described thus
This session will be a brief introduction to the Hydra community, and a 35,000ft view of Hydra technically. It is an opportunity for people new to Hydra to get some context around what we are about and, hence, the rest of the conference! and An introductory presentation at Hydra Connect 2016, described thus