The Outpost

There has been lots of discussion around this possibility since the first discussions about this surfaced last year…it will be interesting to watch how this evolves…

The following is the official press release:

Fedora Commons and DSpace Foundation to Join Together to Create “DuraSpace” Organization

Ithaca, NY, Boston, MA— Fedora Commons and the DSpace Foundation, two of the largest providers of open source software for managing and providing access to digital content, have announced today that they will join their organizations to pursue a common mission. Jointly, they will provide leadership and innovation in open source technologies for global communities who manage, preserve, and provide access to digital content.

The joined organization, named “DuraSpace,” will sustain and grow its flagship repository platforms – Fedora and DSpace. DuraSpace will also expand its portfolio by offering new technologies and services that respond to the dynamic environment of the Web and to new requirements from existing and future users. DuraSpace will focus on supporting existing communities and will also engage a larger and more diverse group of stakeholders in support of its non-for-profit mission. The organization will be led by an executive team consisting of Sandy Payette (Chief Executive Officer), Michele Kimpton (Chief Business Officer), and Brad McLean (Chief Technical Officer) and will operate out of offices in Ithaca, NY and Cambridge, MA.

Together Fedora and DSpace make up the largest market share of open repositories worldwide, serving over 700 institutions. These include organizations committed to the use of open source software solutions for the dissemination and preservation of academic, scientific, and cultural digital content.

“The joining of DSpace and Fedora Commons is a watershed event for libraries, specifically, and higher education, more generally,” said James Hilton, CIO of the University of Virginia. “Separately, these two organizations operated with similar missions and a shared a commitment to developing and supporting open technologies. By bringing together the technical, financial, and community-based resources of the two organizations, the library community gains a robust organization focused on solving the many challenges involved in the storing, curating, and preserving digital data and scholarship,” he said.

New Products

DuraSpace will continue to support its existing software platforms, DSpace and Fedora, as well as expand its offerings to support the needs of global information communities. The first new technology to emerge will be a web-based service named “DuraCloud.” DuraCloud is a hosted service that takes advantage of the cost efficiencies of cloud storage and cloud computing, while adding value to help ensure longevity and re-use of digital content. The DuraSpace organization is developing partnerships with commercial cloud providers who offer both storage and computing capabilities.

The DuraCloud service will be run by the DuraSpace organization. Its target audiences are organizations responsible for digital preservation and groups creating shared spaces for access and re-use of digital content. DuraCloud will be accessible directly as a web service and also via plug-ins to digital repositories including Fedora and DSpace.

The software developed to support the DuraCloud service will be made available as open source. An early release of DuraCloud will be available for selected pilot partners in Fall 2009.

Key Benefits of the DuraSpace Organization

DuraSpace will support both DSpace and Fedora by working closely with both communities and when possible, develop synergistic technologies, services and programs that increase interoperability of the two platforms. DuraSpace will also support other open source software projects including the Mulgara semantic store, a scalable RDF database.

DuraSpace is mission-focused. The organization will be associated with its broader mission of working towards developing services and solutions on behalf of diverse communities rather than focusing on single- solution product development. This change in orientation can be characterized as moving beyond the software and toward the mission.

DuraSpace will bring strength and leadership to a larger community and amplify the value brought by each organization individually. With both organizations working in unison, there can be significant economies of scale, synergies in developing open technologies and services, and a strong position for long-term sustainability.

Learn More about DuraSpace

DuraSpace will be represented at the Fourth Annual International Conference on Open Repositories (http://openrepositories.org/). Please check the schedule and visit the Fedora Commons and DSpace information tables at the conference to learn more. Also, initial information will be available at the DuraSpace website (http://duraspace.org/), with more information forthcoming in June 2009.

About Fedora Commons

Fedora Commons (http://fedora-commons.org/) was established in 2007 as a not-for-profit organization to provide sustainable open-source software to support individuals and organizations in managing, sharing, and preserving digital content created for intellectual, scientific, and cultural purposes. It is the home of the Fedora repository software and related open source projects. Fedora is a robust, integrated, repository system that enables storage, access and management for virtually any kind of digital content. Fedora is integrated with the Mulgara semantic store providing RDF capabilities for the repository. The Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture (Fedora) was originally designed by Sandy Payette and colleagues at Cornell University and was established as an open source project in 2001 by Cornell and the University of Virginia. Fedora now has a large international user community and is installed worldwide at universities, national libraries, research institution, cultural organizations,and corporations. To learn more about the Fedora community see:

http://fedora.info/confluence/display/FCCommReg/Fedora+Commons+Community+Registry.

About DSpace Foundation

The DSpace Foundation (http://dspace.org/) was formed in 2007 to support to the growing global community of institutions using DSpace open source software to manage scholarly works in a digital archive. DSpace was jointly developed in 2002 by HP and the MIT Libraries. Today, there are over more than 350 organizations worldwide a using the software to capture, preserve and share their artifacts, documents, collections and research data. To learn more about the DSpace community of users see: http://www.dspace.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=596&Itemid=182

From Mark and John…

We’re excited to bring you this new weblog on issues, challenges and directions of the Texas Digital Library. We will comment on a broad range of topics as we attempt to engage our members and colleagues in conversations about the rapidly changing world of digital libraries and scholarly communication. We will invite others to join in our explorations as the blog matures. So, stay tuned and please take advantage of the RSS feeds that will alert you to all new posts.

Why “The Outpost?”…it’s because we spend a good deal of time traveling around Texas to our member institutions - and we consider each one to be an outpost of scholarly activity in that region of Texas.  Our outpost, here, is a place where we can contribute our perspective to the conversation that is taking place around the world.

We hope you’ll visit often and let us know if there is something you’d like to see.