Today we officially launch the 2018 DuraSpace Membership Campaign. The campaign raises funds to support the continued advancement of the DuraSpace projects – DSpace, Fedora, VIVO, and CASRAI. While DuraSpace, a non-profit, proudly provides both the software and standards for free for anyone to use, we rely on the financial support and collaboration of our members to continue to advance the design, development, and sustainability of the our projects.
Our projects rely on membership fees to balance paying for staff who provide technical leadership, direct strategic planning, organize community outreach, and coordinate timely software releases for the open source projects with participation in strategic initiatives on behalf of our members. As a result of your financial commitment DuraSpace and the communities it serves are alive with ideas and innovative ways to meet the needs of the ever-expanding scholarly ecosystem that connects us all.
Building bridges around the world
DuraSpace is taking active steps to deepen our engagement with our community of users from around the world. While we have long been the catalyst for improving our open source technologies and building the user communities, we continue to see the need for us to do more within the scholarly ecosystem worldwide. We are excited to help build bridges between countries through our open source technologies. That is why we have cultivated new partnerships with both North American and international organizations and consortia. A central part of these new partnerships is a joint effort to make our technologies compliant with emerging standards and recommendations.
In addition to expanding the reach and impact of our current projects – DSpace, Fedora, and VIVO – we also have sought ways to collaborate more directly within the scholarly ecosystem. As such, we announced last week that CASRAI (Consortia Advancing Standards in Research Administration) is now a project of DuraSpace. The CASRAI community has developed the CASRAI standard dictionary of research administration information to facilitate controlled information exchanges between stakeholders and is on the verge of some really exciting developments that aim to help researchers spend less time on administration and more time on research. This exciting new relationship is part of the effort to broaden our mandate to include open systems and open standards with our current open source solutions. Together we at DuraSpace have expanded our project stewardship to include these ‘3 opens’ under a new OS3 (OS-cubed) branding. To read more about the CASRAI project, please check out the announcement. For more information about our most recent accomplishments and strategic goals for the future, please see the 2017-2018 Strategic Summary.
Membership gives you a voice
By joining with us as a DuraSpace member you have the option of directing your funds to support one or more of our open source projects; Fedora, DSpace or VIVO, CASRAI, or to a general DuraSpace fund that is distributed based on where funding is needed most. Membership at any level gives you access to key information on the development of the project. Higher levels of membership give you the opportunity to play a more active role in the direction and development of the project software and in project governance. To learn more about DuraSpace membership, including a list of benefits by level visit https://duraspace.org/about_membership.
If you value open source software, open standards, and open systems we ask you to speak with your institution’s leadership about becoming a DuraSpace member and join your colleagues in supporting the DuraSpace projects.
Next steps
If your institution is not a DuraSpace member yet you can find out more about the benefits of membership visit https://duraspace.org/membership/value-and-benefits/. To become a member there is a very brief form to complete here https://duraspace.org/membership/become-a-member/. If you are already a member we will be contacting you soon about your membership renewal. If you have any questions or for more information about DuraSpace membership, please contact Valorie Hollister vhollister@duraspace.org.
Thank you for your consideration!
We are grateful for our community’s financial support, and for their engagement in the enterprise we share as we work together to provide enduring access to the world’s digital heritage.