The Hydra-in-a-Box team is happy to announce the imminent availability of the Beta release of Hyku 1.0.0, the minimum viable product towards which we have been working for the past year. Hyku is a Hyrax-based application that adds:

  • Multi-tenancy, or the ability to host multiple repository “slices” within the same application, each with its own users, objects, and look & feel
  • Support for the IIIF Image and Presentation APIs
  • Rich object viewing via the Universal Viewer
  • Two bundled work types: Image and Generic Work
  • and more!

Now that the Beta is available, we’d like to solicit the Samvera community’s assistance with testing the software to improve Hyku and to help define and prioritize our work for the remainder of the year. The Beta test is an opportunity to deploy the Hyku repository locally or in the cloud (Amazon Web Services), to “kick the tires,” and to give the Hydra-in-a-Box team critical feedback on Hyku & its deployment options. We sought to develop a Samvera-based repository that is easy to install, easy to maintain, and easy to configure, and your feedback is crucial for helping us gauge how much progress we’ve made on these goals.

The Beta test is slated to run from Monday, May 15th through Friday, June 23rd.

Here’s what is required of participants:

  1. Register your interest in participating in the Beta test
  2. Install Hyku via one of three methods
  3. Use the Hyku application — you may find this list of workflows handy
  4. Submit bugs and overall feedback

We will be holding weekly office hours to support and interact with folks who participate in the Beta test. Details of our weekly calls are available on our documentation wiki. To discuss Beta test results and engage throughout the Beta period, we have set up the #hyku-beta channel in the Samvera Slack team.

For more information, please see our developing Hyku documentation wiki.