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.
Following a number of successful trademark applications, "TM" was added to the basic Samvera logo. The Samvera logo is a registered trade mark in the USA and is the subject of trademark applications in Canada, the UK and the EU.
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
A combined slide deck of the short reports from Interest and Working Groups at Hydra Connect 2015. Archivists Interest Group Digital Preservation Interest Group Geospatial Interest Group Hydra GIS Data Modeling Working Group Metadata Working Group Page Turner Interest/Working Group Service Management Interest Group User Experience Interest Group Web Presence Interest Group
A poster describing a possible workflow for using the open source software Archivematica to provide preservation functionality alongside the University of Hull's Hydra repository. Prepared for Hydra Connect 2015 in Minneapolis, MN, September 2015
A presentation at the Open Repositories conference in 2014. There are those who perceive that implementing, running and maintaining a Fedora-based digital repository is a daunting task suited only to institutions with a significant team of developers and support staff. This paper offers a different perspective. The University of Hull in the UK, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, and the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California (CHSSC) provide three case studies of Hydra-based repositories that are centred on a single developer working with small, limited or no support. This talk will compare and contrast their experiences and explain why the developers concerned feel that creating and maintaining these successful repositories has been worth their time and effort.
A presentation given at the Open Repositories conference in 2009. Part of the proposal reads and Repositories have proven themselves as powerful tools for managing digital content in many different contexts. But experience has also shown that there are real, practical limits in trying to extend a single repository solution to meet the manifold needs of most institutions for their full range of digital content and use cases. Relatively narrow and inflexible application front ends can be used to create single-purpose repository-powered solutions, but they do not lend themselves to being quickly and easily repurposed to meet variations in content type or user interactions. There is a clear business need for a flexible, reusable application framework that can support the rapid development of multiple systems tailored to distinct needs, but powered by a common underlying repository. Recognizing this common need, Stanford University, the University of Hull and the University of Virginia are collaborating on “Project Hydra”, a three-year effort to create an application and middleware framework that, in combination with an underlying Fedora repository, will create a reusable environment for running multifunction, multipurpose repository-powered solutions. This presentation will provide demonstrations of the work done to date, including of the prototype ETD application, as well as the set of content models and disseminators that the project has defined so far. The presentation will also present links to the project’s publicly accessible documentation and open source code, as well as solicit the constructive input from community members who may be interested in the project or its outcomes.