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.
Keyword:
Open Repositories 2009, Collaboration, Repository, and Hydra
A presentation given at the Open Repositories conference in 2010. In part, the proposal reads and While repositories provide obvious benefits in hosting and managing content, it is equally clear that there is no “one size fits all” solution to the range of digital asset management needs at a typical institution, much less across institutions. A system that supports the submission, approval and dissemination of electronic theses and dissertations, for example, has demonstrably different requirements than a digitization workflow solution, an e-science data repository, or media preservation and access system. There is a clear need in the repository community to readily develop and deploy content-, domain-, and institution-specific solutions that integrate the flexibility and richness of customized applications and workflows with the underlying power of repositories for content management, access and preservation. This paper will provide an overview of Hydra’s philosophy, architecture, and components, as well as demonstrations of various Hydra installations. The paper will also provide a progress report on Hydra development to date and its overall roadmap, as well as provide observations on the successes and challenges of community-based development of shared repository solutions.
Keyword:
Community, Open Repositories 2010, Architecture, Repository, and Hydra
Subject:
Hydra Project
Creator:
Sadler, Bess, Sigmon, Tim, Mene, Willy, Green, Richard A, Staples, Thornton, McRae, Lynn, Cramer, Tom, and Awre, Christopher L
Contributor:
University of Hull, DuraSpace, University of Virginia, and Stanford University
A webinar given by Tom Cramer for the DuraSpace 'Hot Topics' series in 2012. A recording of the webinar is available by following the 'Related URL' link below.
Between April 2005 and March 2009, the e-Services Integration Group at the University of Hull undertook two Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)-funded projects, RepoMMan and REMAP. The RepoMMan tool developed a browser-based interface through which a user could interact with a private digital repository space to support the development of their works-in-progress. It went on to look at the processes involved in publishing such works to a public-facing repository and to investigate the possibility of generating metadata for the published object automatically. The follow-on REMAP Project implemented the publishing process and also investigated how triggers might be embedded in the objects that were created that would help with management and possible preservation of the object over time. The work of RepoMMan and REMAP has now been taken up in an international collaboration, the Hydra Project, which seeks to develop a repository-enabled "Scholars' Workbench". This will be a highly flexible system that will provide a search and discovery interface for a Fedora repository and that can be configured to provide interactive workflows around it for pre-publication development of materials and their post-publication management.
This article centres on the recently completed REMAP Project undertaken at the University of Hull, which has been a key step toward realising a larger vision of the role a repository can play in enabling and supporting digital content management for an institution. The first step was the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC)-funded RepoMMan Project that the team undertook between 2005 and 2007. The second step has been the REMAP Project itself, a key component of a university's information management. In this vision the institutional repository provides not only a showcase for finished digital output, but also a workspace in which members of the University can, if they wish, develop those same materials." This remains the case but with REMAP we added in notions of records management and digital preservation (RMDP) once the materials were placed in the repository. Thus the repository can play a key part throughout the lifetime of the content. It turns out that others share this vision of repository-enabled management over the full lifecycle of born-digital materials, a concept that some are calling the "scholar's workbench". (Others are calling it the "scholars' workbench", Hull uses the Fedora repository software, its development is undertaken by the not-for-profit organisation Fedora Commons. Hull will also be working with King's College London on the CLIF project to December 2010, work that will run in parallel with and complement Hydra. In the Ariadne article describing the work of RepoMMan we wrote, "The vision at Hull was, and is, of a repository placed at the heart of a Web Services architecture, the community has not yet decided quite where the apostrophe belongs!), and JISC-funded again, this second two-year project further developed the work that RepoMMan had started. The third step, more of a leap maybe, is a three-year venture (2008-11), the Hydra Project, being undertaken in partnership with colleagues at Stanford University, the University of Virginia and Fedora Commons
Keyword:
Architecture, Workflow, Hydra, Repository, and Jisc
A webinar given by Matt Zumwalt for the DuraSpace 'Hot Topics' series in 2012 (scheduled for Oct 30, 2012, but recorded separately due to Superstorm Sandy) A recording of the webinar is available by following the 'Related URL' link below.
Chris Awre reports on the Hydra UK event held on 22 November 2012 at the Library of the London School of Economics. The meeting brought together a number of institutions from the UK (and some from Europe more widely) interested in the potential of Hydra.
A webinar given by Rick Johnson and Richard Green for the DuraSpace 'Hot Topics' series in 2012. A recording of the webinar is available by following the 'Related URL' link below.
A presentation given at the London School of Economics and Political Science on 22nd November 2012. The meeting brought together a number of institutions from the UK (and some from Europe more widely) interested in the potential of Hydra. The presentation was one of a number describing the then current use of Hydra in the UK.
Keyword:
Community, Architecture, Repository, Hydra, and Fedora
A presentation given at the London School of Economics and Political Science on 22nd November 2012. The meeting brought together a number of institutions from the UK (and some from Europe more widely) interested in the potential of Hydra. The presentation was one of a number describing the then current use of Hydra in the UK.
Keyword:
Fedora, Architecture, Hydra, Repository, Content models, and Metadata
A presentation given at the London School of Economics and Political Science on 22nd November 2012. The meeting brought together a number of institutions from the UK (and some from Europe more widely) interested in the potential of Hydra. The presentation was one of a number describing the then current use of Hydra in the UK.
Keyword:
Repository, Hydra, Fedora, and Collection management
A workshop given at the 2014 Open Repositories held in Helsinki. The Hydra for Managers workshop will enable repository managers and curators of digital collections to learn about the Hydra Project, encompassing both the community and the technical development. Focusing on the community primarily, topics covered will include an exploration of how Hydra fits local use cases, how to work with Hydra as a repository, and how to engage with the community to serve local needs and the sustainability Hydra going forward. The workshop will run for 90 minutes and will comprise a mixture of presentations and time to discuss questions raised by attendees. The workshop will be led by established Hydra Partners with different perspectives on using Hydra from differently-sized institutions.
Keyword:
Collaboration, Open Repositories 2014, Hydra, Repository, Sustainability, Community, and Workshop
Subject:
Hydra Project
Creator:
Ruggaber, Robin, Cariani, Karen, and Awre, Christopher L
A poster given at the 2014 Open Repositories held in Helsinki. This poster will demonstrate the breadth of usage of the Hydra open repository solution within Europe, and highlight how the institutions using it have engaged with the Hydra community to establish their own repositories and fed into ongoing development. Readers will become aware of the use of Hydra within Europe, and how this relates to the Hydra project overall.
Keyword:
Community, Repository, Hydra, Blacklight, and Fedora
Subject:
Hydra Project
Creator:
Conrad, Anders, Wright, Nicola, Awre, Christopher L, Frost, Dermot, and Arambudo, Roger Guash
Contributor:
London School of Economics and Political Science, Trinity College Dublin, Royal Library, Copenhagen, Denmark, Theater Institute of Barcelona, and University of Hull
At the Digital Collections and Archives (DCA) at Tufts University we have designed, built, and integrated our archival collection management system and repository’s administrative interface to facilitate ingesting archival objects into our Fedora based repository. This 24x7 session briefly explores the assumptions and functional requirements we have used to guide this development work. The DCA’s unique position as an archives that is one of the key stakeholders and users of the Tufts institutional repository has enabled us to meet this integration challenge. The session describes how the integration of our archival collection management system and our repository relies on the ability to flexibly move metadata from one system to another. and A lightning talk given at the Open Repositories conference in 2015 held in Indianapolis described thus
Keyword:
Case study, Digital collections, Hydra, Repository, Archives, Open Repositories 2015, Lightning talk, and Metadata
Diving into the Technology of Hydramata". and A presentation to the Fedora Interest Group track at the 2014 Open Repositories held in Helsinki. As in the heading of the proposal, this was originally offered under the title "Extending the Hydra Head to Create a Pluggable, Extensible Architecture
Keyword:
Architecture, Repository, Curate gem, Hydra, Hydramata, Fedora, Import/export, Technology, Research data management, and Open Repositories 2014
Subject:
Hydra Project
Creator:
Johnson, Rick and Newman, Linda
Contributor:
University of Notre Dame and University of Cincinnati
A panel presentation given at the Open Repositories conference in 2015 held in Indianapolis described thus and Partnerships for shared repositories offer the promise of repository services at a decreased cost due to shared infrastructure and staff. In practice, reduced costs for shared repositories often require tradeoffs in security or access for the shared system. Staff working in a shared system may be geographically distributed or may work for different institutions with different priorities and reporting lines. Effective use of shared services requires thoughtful communication and tools that help maintain consistency and prevent conflicts when multiple people work in the same system. In this panel, shared repository service managers for multisite Islandora installations and a Hydra partnership will discuss methods for distributing system access and communicating with staff who work at our parent organizations, partner institutions, and third-party vendors. Each panelist will discuss the methods used so that distributed staff can have the level of access necessary to use the repository’s unique functions, while also ensuring that widely distributed system access doesn’t result in data loss or system failures.
Keyword:
Fedora, Digital collections, Hydra, Vendors, Open Repositories 2015, Islandora, Documentation, Repository, and Training
Subject:
Hydra Project
Creator:
Dean, Robin, Estlund, Karen, and Herbert, John
Contributor:
University of Oregon Libraries, CO Alliance of Research Libraries, and LYRASIS
Indiana University and Northwestern University, in collaboration with nine partner institutions, recently completed the last year of a three-year IMLS-funded effort to build the Avalon Media System, an open source solution for managing and providing access to digital audio and video collections, based on Fedora and the Hydra repository software development framework. As the Avalon platform reaches maturity, several institutions are in the process of implementing Avalon both to replace current time-based media access solutions and to support new use cases. In addition, new funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will support continued work to develop new features, grow and provide support for the community of adopters, and move Avalon towards organizational and financial sustainability. This panel will bring together project leaders from Indiana and Northwestern, along with Avalon community members at the University of Virginia and Stanford University, to share experiences of implementing Avalon at their institutions, integrating Avalon with other local systems, and supporting Avalon to enable a variety of use cases in research, teaching, and learning. Panel members will also discuss future development plans and provide a preview of how the project intends to transition from a grant-supported endeavor to a community-sustained solution. and Slides for a panel presentation given at the Open Repositories conference in 2015 held in Indianapolis described thus
Keyword:
Fedora, Avalon, Digital collections, Hydra, Repository, Sustainability, Open Repositories 2015, Community, Digitization, Preservation, Workflow, and Archives
Subject:
Avalon Media System
Creator:
Frost, Hannah, Grants, Dunn, Jon, Rudder, Julie, Cane, Debs, and Durbin, Mike
Contributor:
Andrew W Mellon Foundation, University of Virginia, Stanford University, Northwestern University, and Indiana University
A presentation given at Hydra Connect #2 described thus and Our first year of developing a Hydra-based institutional repository yielded many surprises, frustrations, and eureka moments. We will tell you what we wish someone had told us about the Hydra community, Rails applications, System/Stack deployment, and Developer collaboration.
Keyword:
Connect #2 (Fall 2014), Architecture, Hydra, and Repository
