Community, Cohesion, and Commitment: Developing and Deploying Open Source Tools in the UVa Online Library EnvironmentJulie Meloni, University of VirginiaMITH Digital Dialogue // 22 Feb 2011jcmeloni@virginia.edu // @jcmeloni

The Hydra Project• Collaborative effort between University of Virginia, Stanford

University, University of Hull, Fedora Commons/DuraSpace, and MediaShelf.

• Working group created in 2008 to fill a need to develop an end-to-end, flexible, extensible, workflow-driven, Fedora application kit.• Technical Framework • Community Framework

• No direct funding of the Hydra Project itself.

Hydra Project Assumption #1• no single application can meet the full range of digital asset

management needs, but there are shared primitive functions:• Deposit simple or multipart objects, singly or in bulk• Manage object’s content, metadata, and permissions• Search both full text and fielded search in support of user

discovery and administration• Browse objects sequentially by collection, attribute, or ad-hoc

filtering• Delivery of objects for viewing, downloading, and dissemination

through user and machine interfaces

Hydra Project Response

One body, many heads.

Hydra is designed to support tailored applications and workflows for different content types, contexts, and interactions by building from:

• a common repository infrastructure,• flexible, atomic data models, and• modular services and configurable components

Hydra Technical Framework• Fedora as repository layer for persisting and managing digital objects. • An abstraction layer sits between Fedora and the Hydra heads, keeping the

institution and its applications safe from changes in the repository structure• ActiveFedora is a Ruby gem for creating and managing objects in Fedora• Solr indexes provide fast access to information Blacklight for faceted

searching, browsing and tailored views on objects• The Hydra plugin itself: a Ruby on Rails library that works with

ActiveFedora to provide create, update and delete actions against objects in the repository

• A suite of web-based services, supporting granular actions against content to support their management, access and preservation

• Hydrangea, a web application that bundles components and hooks to web services into a single package to support various content management actions• Partners and other developers use Hydrangea as a reference implementation

to begin their own internal projects.

Hydra Project Assumption #2• no single institution or provider can resource the development

or maintenance of a full set of solutions for the same needs.• Problems with proprietary software include expense in terms of

licensing, hardware, maintenance, potential vendor lock-in• Problems with open source software include expense of human

resources, and lack of vendor support causes a reliance on internal resources and community that may have different goals than your own.

Hydra Project Response

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

• Hydra Steering Group• Collaborative roadmapping, resource allocation and coordination,

governance of the technology core• Hydra Managers • Shape and fund work, commission “heads”, create functional

requirements and specifications, UI/UX design, documentation, training, evangelism

• Hydra Developers• Define technical architecture, commit code, integration and

release, testing, testing, testing.

Hydra Community Framework• Conceived and executed as a collaborative, open source effort

from the start• An open architecture, with many contributors to the core• Collaboratively built “solution bundles” that can be adapted

and modified to suit local needs• Hydra heads as reference implementations• Ultimate objective of the Hydra Project is to effectively

intertwine its technical and community threads of development, producing a community-sourced, sustainable application framework.

Open Source in Practice• Blacklight is an open source discovery interface that can be

used as a front end for a digital repository, or as a single-search interface to aggregate digital content that would otherwise be siloed.

• Developed originally within the Scholars’ Lab and UVa Library as a skunkworks project; is now an integral part of the Hydra framework• customizable and removable for ultimate flexibility• many core developers part of the Hydra Project (Bess Sadler, now

at Stanford, Bob Haschert at UVa, etc)• Continued development by a core group of committers

governed by developer norms.

Basic Blacklight

Branded Blacklight

Hydra Head Implementation• Hydrangea: not a turnkey IR solution, but a framework for

depositing, managing, searching, browsing, and delivering digital content (and preserving the scholarly record).• Electronic Theses & Dissertations• Journal Pre-prints• Scientific Datasets• Scanned Archival Manuscripts

• Development on Hydrangea core, but also branches:• Hydrus: the Stanford implementation• Hydra at Hull: the University of Hull implementation• Libra: the UVa implementation

Libra in Development

Libra in Development

Libra in Development

Libra in Development

HYPATIA• HYdra Platform for Access to Information in Archives• A Hydra head that enables processing, arrangement, description

and access for born digital archival materials. • Built in association with the Mellon AIMS Grant (with UVa, Hull,

Stanford & Yale as partners).• Functional specifications mapped by content experts• Discussion within Hydra Steering• Resource allocation among partners• Development and continuous integration from the community• Win!

Community, Cohesion, & Commitment

• Given access to a vibrant community of developers and end users, plus

• A desire to work together when offered workflows and the opportunity to effect change, with a goal of completing

• Projects and commitments already made, leveraging lessons learned and continuing to move forward, then…

• all of this runs on love.

Possible Discussion Questions• Seriously? It runs on love? (Yes, seriously.)• Balancing commitments to library applications in production

with those in development, plus responsibilities to the community

• Team demographics• Skills required, ongoing training, developer assumptions• More?