Hydra: a case study Chris Awre Head of Information Services, University Library The Challenge of Digital Scholarship, 19th January 2017

Five observations Digital content will grow How do we scale our solutions? Digital content will continue to be variable How can we be content agnostic? Digital content will need to be managed in different ways over its lifetime How can we use standards and systems to enable this? Digital content comes in different bits, which need to understand each other Linked data? Digital content needs management Which has resource implications The Challenge of Digital Scholarship | 19 January 2017 | 2

Building the digital library The Challenge of Digital Scholarship | 19 January 2017 | 3

An institutional repository One institution = one repository? Repository as infrastructure, not application Maintaining infrastructure requires resource, which we need to minimise to justify costs in the long-term Content doesn’t sit in silos One repository facilitates cross-fertilisation of use Integration with one system Embedding the repository means linking to one place The Challenge of Digital Scholarship | 19 January 2017 | 4

Creating a sustainable open source project Technology Community The Challenge of Digital Scholarship | 19 January 2017 | 5

Fundamental Assumption #1 No single system can provide the full range of repository- based solutions for a given institution’s needs, …yet sustainable solutions require a common repository infrastructure. Fundamental Assumption #2 No single institution can resource the development of a full range of solutions on its own, …yet each needs the flexibility to tailor solutions to local demands and workflows. The Challenge of Digital Scholarship | 19 January 2017 | 6

Hydra A collaborative project between: University of Hull University of Virginia Stanford University Fedora Commons/DuraSpace MediaShelf LLC Unfunded (in itself) Activity based on identification of a common need Aim to work towards a reusable framework for multipurpose, multifunction, multi-institutional repository-enabled solutions Timeframe - 2008-11 (but now extended indefinitely) Text The Challenge of Digital Scholarship | 19 January 2017 | 7 Change the way you think about Hull | 7 October 2009 | 2

Fedora and Hydra Hydra Hydra Hydra provides user interfaces and workflows over the repository Concept of multiple Hydra ‘heads’ over single body of content Hydra Hydra Fedora Fedora is the digital repository system, holding the content in a highly structured way Storage (e.g., SAN, Cloud) The content is stored either locally or in the Cloud (currently a slice of the SAN) The Challenge of Digital Scholarship | 19 January 2017 | 8

Hydra partnership “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together” (African proverb) The Challenge of Digital Scholarship | 19 January 2017 | 9

Hydra Partners & Known Users The Challenge of Digital Scholarship | 19 January 2017 | 10

Hydra Partners & Known Users The Challenge of Digital Scholarship | 19 January 2017 | 11

What is Hydra? Community Hydra Connect Mailing lists, Slack, Skype/Hangouts Meetings – manager and technical focus The Challenge of Digital Scholarship | 19 January 2017 | 12

Digital scholarship support: Four Key Capabilities Support for any kind of record or metadata Object-specific behaviors Books, Articles, Images, Music, Video, Manuscripts, etc. Tailored views for domain or discipline-specific materials Easy to augment & over-ride with local modifications The Challenge of Digital Scholarship | 19 January 2017 | 13

Hydra @ Hull Implemented during 2011 Read interfaces went live Sep 2011 Create, update and delete functions went live Feb 2012 Developer learned Ruby on Rails technology base from scratch But came to want to do everything based on it Upgraded and re-designed in 2014 Currently monitoring developments to decide on next step Use cases expanding The Challenge of Digital Scholarship | 19 January 2017 | 14

Hydra @ Hull The Challenge of Digital Scholarship | 19 January 2017 | 15

Some examples… Hull - http://hydra.hull.ac.uk (general purpose) Northwestern - https://images.northwestern.edu/ (images) Indiana - https://media.dlib.indiana.edu/ (audio / video) UC San Diego - https://library.ucsd.edu/dc (general + data) Durham – https://collections.durham.ac.uk (data) Oregon Digital - http://oregondigital.org/catalog/ (digitised collections) York – https://archbishopsregisters.york.ac.uk (special collections) Boston Public Library – https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org (various, plus map access) The Challenge of Digital Scholarship | 19 January 2017 | 16

Reflections Only could have provided local solution through collaboration Hydra can’t do everything, but provides capability and confidence we can adapt and implement to meet needs, now and in the future Relationship between Hydra and Fedora is vital Community support required for each and across them Success has come through good software design and patterns as much as from ability to address digital curation use cases The Challenge of Digital Scholarship | 19 January 2017 | 17

Thank you c. awre@hull. ac Thank you c.awre@hull.ac.uk (with thanks to Tom Cramer for use of some slides) http://projecthydra.org