[OAI-implementers] DuraSpace Press Release

Wed May 13 07:51:33 EDT 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 12, 2009
Contact: Carol Minton Morris, clt6 at cornell.edu, (607) 255-2702
Contact: Michele Kimpton, michele at dspace.org
Contact: Sandy Payette, spayette at fedora-commons.org
Fedora Commons and DSpace Foundation Join Together to Create 
DuraSpace™ Organization
Ithaca, NY, Boston, MA --- Fedora Commons and the DSpace Foundation, 
two of the largest providers of open source software for managing and 
providing access to digital content, have announced today that they 
will join their organizations to pursue a common mission. Jointly, 
they will provide leadership and innovation in open source 
technologies for global communities who manage, preserve, and provide 
access to digital content.
The joined organization, named “DuraSpace,” will sustain and grow its 
flagship repository platforms - Fedora and DSpace. DuraSpace will 
also expand its portfolio by offering new technologies and services 
that respond to the dynamic environment of the Web and to new 
requirements from existing and future users. DuraSpace will focus on 
supporting existing communities and will also engage a larger and more 
diverse group of stakeholders in support of its not-for-profit 
mission. The organization will be led by an executive team consisting 
of Sandy Payette (Chief Executive Officer), Michele Kimpton (Chief 
Business Officer), and Brad McLean (Chief Technology Officer) and will 
operate out of offices in Ithaca, NY and Cambridge, MA.
“This is a great development,” said Clifford Lynch, Executive Director 
of the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI). “It will focus 
resources and talent in a way that should really accelerate progress 
in areas critical to the research, education, and cultural memory 
communities. The new emphasis on distributed reliable storage 
infrastructure services and their integration with repositories is 
particularly timely. ”
Together Fedora and DSpace make up the largest market share of open 
repositories worldwide, serving over 700 institutions. These include 
organizations committed to the use of open source software solutions 
for the dissemination and preservation of academic, scientific, and 
cultural digital content.
 “The joining of DSpace and Fedora Commons is a watershed event for 
libraries, specifically, and higher education, more generally,” said 
James Hilton, CIO of the University of Virginia. “Separately, these 
two organizations operated with similar missions and a shared 
commitment to developing and supporting open technologies. By 
bringing together the technical, financial, and community-based 
resources of the two organizations, their communities gain a robust 
organization focused on solving the many challenges involved in 
storing, curating, and preserving digital data and scholarship,” he 
said.
New Products
DuraSpace will continue to support its existing software platforms, 
DSpace and Fedora, as well as expand its offerings to support the 
needs of global information communities. The first new technology to 
emerge will be a Web-based service named “DuraCloud.” DuraCloud is a 
hosted service that takes advantage of the cost efficiencies of cloud 
storage and cloud computing, while adding value to help ensure 
longevity and re-use of digital content. The DuraSpace organization 
is developing partnerships with commercial cloud providers who offer 
both storage and computing capabilities.
The DuraCloud service will be run by the DuraSpace organization. Its 
target audiences are organizations responsible for digital 
preservation and groups creating shared spaces for access and re-use 
of digital content. DuraCloud will be accessible directly as a Web 
service and also via plug-ins to digital repositories including Fedora 
and DSpace. The software developed to support the DuraCloud service 
will be made available as open source. An early release of DuraCloud 
will be available for selected pilot partners in Fall 2009.
Key Benefits of the DuraSpace Organization
DuraSpace will support both DSpace and Fedora by working closely with 
both communities and, when possible, develop synergistic technologies, 
services, and programs that increase interoperability of the two 
platforms. DuraSpace will also support other open source software 
projects including the Mulgara semantic store, a scalable RDF database.
DuraSpace will pursue a mission that extends beyond these existing 
software platforms. This broader mission will include developing open 
technologies and services for the communities that have developed 
around these two platforms. The organization will also reach out to 
new communities who manage, preserve, and provide access to digital 
content.
DuraSpace will amplify the value of each individual organization, 
enabling it to sustain a larger community. With both organizations 
working in unison, there can be significant economies of scale, 
synergies in developing open technologies and services, and a strong 
position for long-term sustainability.
Learn More about DuraSpace
DuraSpace will be represented at the Fourth Annual International 
Conference on Open Repositories (http://openrepositories.org/). 
Please check the schedule and visit the Fedora Commons and DSpace 
information tables at the conference to learn more.
More information is available at the DuraSpace website (http://duraspace.org/ 
), including Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).
About Fedora Commons
Fedora Commons (http://fedora-commons.org/) was established in 2007 as 
a not-for-profit organization and the home of the Fedora repository 
software and related open source projects. Fedora is a robust, 
integrated, repository system that enables storage, access and 
management for virtually any kind of digital content. The Flexible 
Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture (Fedora) was 
originally designed by Sandy Payette and colleagues at Cornell 
University and was established as an open source project in 2001 by 
Cornell and the University of Virginia. Fedora has a large 
international user community and is installed worldwide at 
universities, libraries, research institutions, cultural 
organizations, and corporations. For more information contact 
Thornton Staples, Director of Community Outreach and Alliances at tstaples at fedora-commons.org 
, or Chris Wilper, Technical Lead at cwilper at fedora-commons.org. Also 
see: http://fedora-commons.org/confluence/x/KINB
About DSpace Foundation
The DSpace Foundation (http://dspace.org/) was formed in 2007 to 
support the growing global community of institutions using DSpace open 
source software to manage scholarly works in a digital repository. 
DSpace was jointly developed in 2002 by Hewlett-Packard and the MIT 
Libraries. Today, there are over more than 500 organizations 
worldwide using the software to manage, preserve, and share their 
scholarly output. To learn more about DSpace and its community of 
users visit www.dspace.org or contact Valorie Hollister, Community 
Outreach Manager at val at dspace.org.
Sandy Payette
Executive Director
Fedora Commons
spayette at fedora-commons.org
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