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

2. 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 | 2

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

4. 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 | 4

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

6. 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 | 6

7. 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 (but now extended indefinitely)
Text
The Challenge of Digital Scholarship | 19 January | 7
Change the way you think about Hull | 7 October 2009 | 2

8. 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 | 8

9. 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 | 9

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

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

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

13. 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 | 13

14. 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 | 14

15. Hull
The Challenge of Digital Scholarship | 19 January | 15

16. Some examples… Hull - http://hydra.hull.ac.uk (general purpose)
Northwestern - (images)
Indiana - (audio / video)
UC San Diego - (general + data)
Durham – (data)
Oregon Digital - (digitised collections)
York – (special collections)
Boston Public Library – (various, plus map access)
The Challenge of Digital Scholarship | 19 January | 16

17. 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 | 17

18. Thank you c. awre@hull. ac
Thank you (with thanks to Tom Cramer for use of some slides)