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Building the Hyku Commons User Community:

A Model for Repository Collaboration

Open Repositories Conference

June 8, 2022

Amanda Hurford, Kirsten Leonard, Nicholas Stanton-Roark, Jill Morris

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Background:

Who we are
Our project/product
IMLS Grant

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Collaborating Consortia -- “The PALs”

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About Hyku for Consortia

Hyku for Consortia is the project name for our collaboration

Hykuforconsortia.org

Hyku Commons is the product name for our collaborative instance

Hykucommons.org

Multi-tenant instance of Hyku in use across our consortia
Hosted and developed by Software Services by Scientist.com

aka, SoftServ, formerly known as Notch8

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Hyku for Consortia: Removing Barriers to Adoption

IMLS National Leadership Grant for Libraries

24 month project
Second IMLS grant awarded to the PALs
Identify and address barriers to Hyku adoption

This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services, LG-36-19-0108.

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Defining & Addressing the Problem

Community needs
Joining forces
Remaining barriers

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Community Needs

Many libraries are unable to deploy repositories on their own

Costs (significant, widespread, and prolonged cuts to library budgets)
Staffing
Technological barriers
Other constraints

Commercial repository services have proven too costly

Continued consolidation of commercial repository services and software

However: Open source systems also require significant investment (cost, staff, technology)

Kirsten

PALNI has been trying to find an IR solution that works for our very small staff libraries - think 2 staff members in some cases and FTE sizes from 80 to 5500. PALNI hosts and runs consortial technology with assistance from vendors. We convened a task force way back in 2012 to understand both our needs and our options. That group produced a vision/white paper that is published on the PALNI web site.

What we found is that Many libraries are unable to deploy repositories on their own due to costs, staffing, or other constraints.

Existing commercial repository services, such as BePress, have proven too costly for many institutions, and many open source systems lack the configuration options necessary for efficient and easy-to-use services at consortial scale.

PALNI in particular was looking for software that would allow a core team and experts threaded throughout the schools provide support to each individual school in what we call deep collaboration.

So, To counter significant, widespread, and prolonged cuts to library budgets and continued consolidation of commercial repository services and software, we …

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Joining Forces in and Across Consortia

Libraries are looking increasingly to consortia for repository service
Consortia seek solutions that scale
Partnerships like the PALNI-PALCI collaboration serve as a potential model for sharing:

Cost, expertise, human resources

Other library consortia are eager to explore meaningful partnerships

Either to learn about the model worked together to leverage available resources in a mutually beneficial model.
Or as Hyku for Consortia partners

Kirsten

Libraries are looking increasingly to consortia to serve this role. And the consortia themselves are challenged so are looking to partner together.

PALNI was lucky to find alignment with PALCI and to leverage their learnings on the early stages of Hyku

The PALs have convened several meetings with other consortia leadership in the International Coalition of Library Consortia to learn more about their experiences (mostly hosting Dspace) and understand their needs.

We learned that many consortia are actively seeking solutions that scale to support the repository needs of groups of libraries in an affordable and flexible way and to develop unified strategies for repository services.

As budgets tighten and libraries’ capacity for running repository services diminishes, partnerships like the PALNI-PALCI collaboration serve as a potential model for sharing costs and human resources in many different consortial environments. We have found that many other library consortia are eager to explore meaningful partnerships in the repository space for greater shared benefit.

Over the previous three years we have spent hours speaking with many different consortia interested in learning about our project and how it could be applied in their own environment, including several seeking to partner directly.

VIVA, LOUIS, SCELC, Atla, and others are given assistance and direct access to our instance of Hyku to learn and contribute.

Others have been interested in how our two groups have worked together to leverage available resources in a mutually beneficial model for their future.

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Hyku is a Solution, but Barriers Remain

Open source tool for multi-tenant repository management
Affordable and user-friendly
However, there is room for improvement:

customization options for metadata flexibility
administrative functionality
front-end usability features

Amanda

Our team chose Hyku as our solution because it best met our most important project parameters
We knew we wanted an open source tool rather than a commercial platform
Needed to be multitenant -- centrally managed by consortial staff, but each tenant has its own search index and branding
Hyku is a viable open source, multitenant repository option
We can offer to our libraries at a low cost, and it is easier to user than other open source tools
While Hyku is a great solution with potential for consortial scale
We’ve heard from our libraries and we’ve seen first hand that there are some barriers
These three areas

1) customization options for metadata flexibility -- our users want more options to describe their resources than the out of the box worktypes
2) administrative functionality -- users want more streamlined workflow options
3) front-end usability features -- want to be able to provide a better user experience for researchers

We believe that development in these areas will make Hyku more attractive to institutions
Whether migrating from another solution or starting from scratch

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Approach

Goals
Community
Research Activities
User-driven Development
User Communication

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Grant Project Goals

Provide a Toolkit

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For others considering collaborating on a repository

User-focused Development

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Tightly scoped around high priority features

Produce a Gap Assessment

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Focus on barriers to adoption

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Hyku Commons User Community

Together, the PALs have built a user community to

identify gaps in Hyku
deduplicate work
encourage sharing of solutions across institutions.

Including other project partners to test scalability

VIVA, LOUIS
SCELC, Atla, and more

Over 30 repository tenants

14 public
Others are private, in development or for testing

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Conducting Research

To produce the gap assessment and identify priorities for development
Our community:

satisfaction surveys
structured interviews
focus groups
usability tests

Other key demographic groups to provide input

consortia staff
libraries with repository solutions
libraries underserved by current technology availability.

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Delivering User-Driven Enhancements

Research analysis informs development to remove barriers
Partners at SoftServ to deliver enhancements and changes to Hyku
Developments shared back
Leverage Samvera community for efficient creation of new features or adapt existing ones to our environment.
To support migration into and out of Hyku, our current sprint focused on import/export

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Facilitating User Communication & Connection

Basecamp platform provides avenue for our users to communicate
Sharing tips and tricks, reporting bugs, and pushing out notifications
We provide shared user guides, training materials, policies, and documentation
User group meetings provide opportunity for users across consortia to connect

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Conclusions

Filling a need
Consortial role in community
Toolkit for collaboration

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Filling a Need for Repository Collaboration

The need exists for facilitated collaboration in repository management.
Users have been eager to pilot and share
Community feedback is essential for making community-led and user-focused development decisions
Community feedback collaboratively helps to grow the platform and reduce barriers to utilizing Hyku

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Consortial Role in the Samvera Community

The PALs play an important role in the Samvera Community.
Joined the Samvera Partners
Active in Hyku Interest Group
Hosting the Hyku User Water Cooler
We remain committed to sharing all code produced in this project under permissive open source licenses
Desire maximum use, re-use, and expansion of the work completed in this project.

Kirsten

Finally, we’ve learned that our involvement in this project is playing a key role in the Samvera Community. The PALs have joined the Samvera Partners, and we remain committed to sharing all code produced in this project under permissive open source licenses, allowing for maximum use, re-use, and expansion of the work completed in this project.

I’d also like to thank Heather Greer Klein for reaching out to us to invite us to be partners. We were their first consortial partners I believe, and Jill and I were able to leverage our shared resources to be able to participate in terms of time and expertise. Community at its best.

We’ve also been active in the Hyku Interest Group

And we convened the Hyku User Group Water Cooler amongst other groups like The British Library, that were looking to Hyku to meet their group needs. That has been a fabulous experience as we learn and grow in this space together.

We are interested in making the most of the collaboration at all levels, and all work will be contributed back, certainly the code

…. And including all documentation.

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Providing a Toolkit for Collaboration

Operational Toolkit for Repository Collaboration

Consortial Needs

Hyku Commons

Experience

Platform Agnostic

Community Feedback

Kirsten

A key part of our project is to Help build other communities from the learnings and expertise we gain

We are developing a consortial toolkit for repository services based on our preliminary operational model and learned experience managing the Hyku Commons user community. This will make it easier for other consortia or groups of libraries to stand up a shared Hyku instance

The toolkit will have all material including our business plan, organizational and staffing models, workflows, documentation, onboarding examples, and policy frameworks.

The toolkit will be shared with the consortia community for feedback and collaboration, eventually creating a replicable service model and addressing broader aspects of the national need for affordable access to repository services.

We have been keeping the ICOLC community aware of the project and have been consulting and learning from other consortia and their experiences in providing IR services to their libraries.

The process of building the toolkit will also increase the community of practitioners to discuss and share best practices. This will influence and strengthen the toolkit we create, but will provide the opportunity for more consortia, systems, and groups to become involved and participate in this area.

We will be gathering input from them during two community meetings from which we will produce two deliverables: a report on the draft toolkit and the gaps that need to be addressed, and a final toolkit for widespread use.

Toolkit Recommendations will be applicable at some levels for other platforms and we will be sure to post widely when it is ready

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Thank you!

consortial-ir@palci.org

hykuforconsortia.org