Maintaining an open mind: sustaining open-source digital collections

Presenter Information

Rachel Howard, University of LouisvilleFollow
Emma C. Beck, University of LouisvilleFollow
Terri L. Holtze, University of LouisvilleFollow
Randy Kuehn, University of LouisvilleFollow

Presentation Type

Presentation

Location

Teams.

Start Date

8-4-2025 1:00 PM

End Date

8-4-2025 1:50 PM

Description

After a slow and laborious migration process, the University of Louisville successfully migrated from proprietary digital collections software to an open-source Samvera Hyku solution. After our migration our over-enthusiastic customizations started to catch up with us and our users. Without sufficient funding and development support, even as an R1 institution, we are stuck unable to support our bespoke approach. Despite this we are persisting with Hyku, largely because of the supportive Samvera Community and its efforts to increase the sustainability of the system as a whole. From the perspectives of three mid-career librarians (serving as project manager, designer, and developer) and the early-career Metadata Librarian, we will discuss the importance of a) assessing resources before diving into an open-source project and b) cooperating with community partners in open-source software development and maintenance.

Author Bios

• Emma C. Beck is Metadata Librarian at the University of Louisville Archives & Special Collections. She is the newest member of the team and prior to this position was working as a Library Assistant while finishing her MLIS.

• Terri L. Holtze is Head of Web Services for the University of Louisville Libraries. She designs and oversees web development, particularly in terms of usability and web compliance to the Americans with Disabilities Act.

• Rachel I. Howard is Digital Initiatives Librarian at the University of Louisville Archives and Special Collections, responsible for Digital Collections (primary source materials) and ThinkIR (institutional repository).

• Randy Kuehn is a full-stack developer for the University of Louisville Libraries, specializing in the design, development, and management of open-source software solutions.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.