Hydra-In-a-Box

As the repository-driven components of the Hydra-in-a-Box project wrap up, DPLA will continue work into the next year on the so-called ‘aggregator in a box’ piece, thanks to a no-cost extension of our IMLS grant. The goal for this work is not only to develop an improved aggregation system for DPLA, but one that can be generalized for broader use by our Hubs and other aggregators.

Now is a good time (of year) to extend our extreme appreciation and eternal gratitude to all the individuals who contributed to the Hydra-in-a-Box project during our grant period, May 2015 - November 2017.

This month, November 2017, marks the final month of the Hydra-in-a-Box project. Looking back from this milestone, it’s remarkable to recognize the work that went into a long list of accomplishments over the past two and a half years! Interest in the outcomes of our project has exceeded our expectations, and clearly there is a great deal of momentum and drive among the community to continue moving it forward. Read on to learn more about our plans to do just that and how you can help.

With the milestone of Open Repositories 2017 now behind us, and as we head into the dog days of summer, the project team has been steadily working to lay out our plans for the coming weeks and into the fall 2017 season.

It’s the week of Open Repositories 2017, the annual international conference for delegates from research libraries and other institutions around the globe to meet up (this year in lovely Bribane, Australia) and share their latest challenges and advances. We can’t think of a better time to highlight Hyku’s support for a growing number of languages in the application UI. We are up to seven!

A detailed report on the Hydra-in-a-Box team’s recent testing of a new standard for synchronization of content resources across the web.

Sixth and final post in a series highlighting the personas produced in our design process, each representing a typical user of Hydra-in-a-Box and embodying a number of use cases that our repository product, now in development, or our hosted service, now in planning, aim to fulfill.

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:

At this moment in time, the Digital Public Library of America, Stanford University Libraries, and DuraSpace wish to express again our deep gratitude to the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) for generously funding the Hydra-in-a-Box project. As recipients of the largest single IMLS award to date ($2M), these three diverse but mission-aligned organizations are able to create Hyku, a turnkey and open source software repository solution, now under development. Hyku will help institutions of all kinds and sizes by making it easier and more affordable to collect, manage, publish, and preserve digital content such as publications, data and research outputs, and all manner of media collections. Our work on this technology aims to serve humanity by promoting research and learning in all disciplines, in all languages, in all corners of the globe. Preserving and promoting access to information makes possible new discoveries in the sciences, the humanities, and the arts. It is through such discoveries that we as a civilization attain a greater understanding of the human condition, that we are able to cure disease and prolong lives, that we can protect the vitality of our planet, that we build cultural awareness and harmony, enriching our collective experience.

Fifth in a series of blog posts highlighting the personas produced in our design process, each representing a typical user of Hydra-in-a-Box and embodying a number of use cases that our repository product, now in development, or our hosted service, now in planning, aim to fulfill.

As the Hydra-in-a-Box project prepares for major developments in 2017 – release of the Hyku repository minimum viable product, a HykuDirect hosted service pilot program, and a higher-performing aggregation system at DPLA – we welcome three stars who recently joined the project team. Please join us in welcoming Michael Della Bitta, Heather Greer Klein, and Kelcy Shepherd. Each brings deep experience, unique skills, and genuine enthusiasm to the team and will help to ensure that our collective communities are well-informed about this exciting new repository platform and the opportunities to get involved.

Fourth in a series of blog posts highlighting the personas produced in our design process, each representing a typical user of Hydra-in-a-Box and embodying a number of use cases that our repository product, now in development, or our hosted service, now in planning, aim to fulfill.

Third in a series of blog posts highlighting the personas produced in our design process, each representing a typical user of Hydra-in-a-Box and embodying a number of use cases that our repository product, now in development, or the hosted service, now in planning, aim to fulfill.

Second in a series of blog posts highlighting the personas produced in our design process, each representing a typical user of Hydra-in-a-Box and embodying a number of use cases that our repository product, now in development, or the hosted service, now in planning, aim to fulfill.

First in a series of blog posts highlighting the personas produced in our design process, each representing a typical user of Hydra-in-a-Box and embodying a number of use cases that our repository product, now in development, or the hosted service, now in planning, aim to fulfill.

After a brief hiatus following Open Repositories 2016, the Hydra-in-a-Box technical team is again hard at work developing the Hydra-in-a-Box repository application ¹. The current work cycle runs from August through November of 2016, building on the infrastructure work, API support, and preliminary feature work undertaken in our first repository application work cycle (March-June 2016) ². Our focus is now on the features and functionality that have surfaced in the requirements gathering process undertaken in the Design Phase ³. The end goal of this second work cycle is to beta-release a feature-full application in late autumn 2016 for product piloting by other institutions in late winter 2017 (details forthcoming!).

As the Hydra-in-a-Box team travels to professional events to spread the word and ask for input on the project, we frequently hear questions about how the repository relates to DPLA participation. Some wonder if implementing the new repository will provide an immediate onramp to DPLA; others wonder if they will now have to implement the repository in order to continue sharing records. And still others just don’t understand where DPLA fits into the project at all.

Sometimes you need to work on something for a while before you figure out what its name should be. We’re at that stage now. The official name for the project, the one that was on the grant proposal, describes the overarching objectives of the grant, but it’s anything but pithy: Fostering a New National Library Network through a Community-Based, Connected Repository System. So what should we call what we’re making? (No really—we need your ideas. Read on!)

The Hydra-in-a-Box technical team’s first development work cycle is now complete, having run from March until June of this year. Here’s a demo summarizing much of the feature work we did during this cycle.

It’s only three weeks away! If you will attend the 11th Annual International Conference on Open Repositories (#OR2016Dub), here are the sessions that will be of interest if you want to learn more about the Hydra-in-a-Box project.

The Hydra-in-a-Box technical team’s sprint 3 demo – showing deployment to Amazon Web Services, multi-tenancy, the configuration user interface, and Sufia’s new batch upload workflow – is now available:

One of the earliest technical decisions the Hydra-in-a-Box team made was to base our repository product on existing Samvera community software instead of basing it on a fork or on bespoke software. This made sense given the diversity and maturity of software products already provided by the Samvera community.

After an invigorating week at LDCX and Samvera community meetings, the Hydra-in-a-Box technical team hit the ground running on Monday in what was our second development sprint. We’ll be sharing our progress via weekly demonstrations, the first of which is now available.

Project Update

The past month has been full, and we have plenty of news to report. Read on if you want to catch up on: the Intent to Merge announcement from DuraSpace and LYRASIS; how the Hydra-in-a-Box team is organizing and digging into our work; and decisions we have made about content types to be supported in the application.

Getting complex systems with complex data to interoperate is a tricky problem. This is what the Portland Common Data Model (PCDM) aims to do for interoperable data models, which are useful in many contexts, including digital repositories. PCDM will be used to build the data models in the feature-rich, next-generation Fedora-based digital repository, Hydra-in-a-Box.

Project Update

The team is busy! Here’s an update on where we are with the project:

This may be the first post to the Hydra-in-a-Box blog, but our planning and design work has been underway for months. Now, with Mike Giarlo joining Stanford as Technical Manager on the project, the team feels complete. We will issue regular blog posts, just like this one, to provide project updates, highlight relevant news in our field that helps put our project in context, and list upcoming opportunities (presentations and the like) to learn more about Hydra-in-a-Box.