DSPACE
From Salwa Ismail, DSpace Leadership Group Chair, Head of Library Information Technology (LIT)
Georgetown University Library

As a community-based open source project, the DSpace digital platform is guided by the project Steering and Leadership Groups, which represent the needs of more than 2,000 stakeholder institutions around the world who use DSpace. Last year, the Leadership Group was infused with energy as elections were held and a new membership model was chosen for governance. Twenty new members were elected to the Leadership Group, and priorities were set forth to align with existing work, and to lead DSpace into a brighter future with a refreshed roadmap.

There are many exciting developments planned for the release of DSpace 7, which is a complete overhaul of the current DSpace infrastructure. The new version is a significant break from past versions, in that it features a new user interface built on current technology and support for data entities in the data model (aligning with research information systems) to ensure that DSpace stays current and competitive with other repository solutions while being interoperable with existing research information systems.

The Leadership Group is developing plans to involve more community feedback, by creating working groups that have representation from the community as requirements for the projects are developed and implemented. Another important goal that the Leadership Group is excited to implement is to ensure a broader and more inclusive communication with and feedback from the larger DSpace community about these new features and developments, so the project governance can engage with DSpace members and non-members in the adoption of and migration to DSpace. The Leadership Group works closely with the Steering Group which is responsible for implementing these priorities and coordinating with the various Working Groups. The working groups are incubators for many features and improvements to DSpace, and one of our priorities as the DSpace Leadership Group for the year 2018-2019 is to continue that community engagement in the form of our working groups, which will help us ensure a robust platform and an engaged community.

DSpace as a platform benefits from the fact that the Leadership Group has international representation from South America and Europe that helps ensure a truly global and rich set of factors are encompassed to make DSpace a very competitive platform. GDPR compliance and integration with other platforms, applications, and guidelines such as ORCID, OpenAire, CRIS data model is a current priority. The Leadership Group meets monthly and the meeting notes and decisions are posted online for the community to access.

About the DSpace Leadership Group: https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/DSPACE/DSpace+Leadership+Group

FEDORA
From Robin Ruggaber, Fedora Leadership Group Chair, Library CTO &. Senior Director IT, University of Virginia

Fedora has established itself as a mature, community-supported, open source project, with growing membership and active participation from a wide variety of stakeholders. The leadership group is aiming for steady growth and progress towards fulfilling key priorities, along with a renewed focus on the long-term vision and the roadmap for Fedora.

In 2019, the LG will focus initially on completion of a comprehensive roadmap which will support the completion of the Fedora API framework and tested implementations but will also chart the course for other aspects of the community of vital importance to the product. This work is essential to achieving objectives in communication, marketing, fundraising, and community expansion.

The roadmap is a critical foundation for prioritizing and aligning work across the community. Collaboration and participation in the communities that leverage Fedora generates valuable use cases necessary to evolve Fedora. A prime example is the current API framework affording flexible options for competing demands- high availability vs performance.

About the Fedora Leadership Group: https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/FF/Roles+and+Responsibilities#RolesandResponsibilities-LeadershipGroup

VIVO
From Julia Trimmer, VIVO Leadership Group Chair, Manager of Faculty Data Systems and Analysis, Duke University

It’s a big year for VIVO! We welcome for two new members, SIGMA, an academic IT non-profit based in Barcelona, Spain, and Cineca, an Italian consortium of universities and the Italian Ministry of Education. Anna Guillaumet from SIGMA and Federico Ferrario from Cineca have joined other esteemed members on the VIVO Leadership Group, including three members of the DuraSpace Board of Directors.

Made up of new and seasoned VIVO community members, the Leadership Group meets every four weeks and provides strategic direction for the more operational Steering Group, which meets every two weeks. Both groups are critical to the success of VIVO.

This summer, we thanked Dean Krafft at Cornell for serving as the VIVO Leadership Group Chair for an incredible seven years. We crafted new terms for the Leadership and Steering Groups members, including the chair, that are much less heroic. We held elections for community and bronze members this summer and formed new meeting processes—resulting in somewhat re-tooled governance groups and policies for VIVO.

Our biggest priority this year is to engage our Leadership Group in committing development resources for sprints. With the help of Andrew Woods, we’ve identified development priorities for the year and we’re moving towards a sprint schedule that will map out this development work. Hopefully, this schedule will help VIVO members plan ahead to commit developer resources.

DuraSpace staff and other projects have provided tremendous help to VIVO this year for governance, technical leadership, membership guidance and all kinds of administrative and organizational support, and we’ll continue to lean on them in the coming months.

VIVO is lucky to have an incredible community of talented, committed users, developers, and supporters, and we’re hearing a lot of exciting ideas about new directions that VIVO might take. We’re looking forward to bringing that energy and innovation together to move VIVO forward in 2019 and beyond!

About the VIVO Leadership Group: https://wiki.duraspace.org/display/VIVO/VIVO+Leadership+Group