PMC Meeting: June 13, 2022

Attending: Oliver Goldschmidt, Leila Gonzales, Chris Hallberg, Demian Katz, André Lahmann, Jan Maas, Ere Maijala, Mohan Raj Pradhan

Apologies: Craig Murdoch, Leander Seige

• Demian: draft 2022 VuFind Summit CFP form. DONE
• ALL: consider volunteering to lead “Intro to VuFind” session in person at WOLFcon. DONE
• André: coordinate with Beth on final details of “VuFind for Specialised Information Services” session. DONE
• Demian: schedule 8.1 release. DONE
• ALL: review/comment on 8.1 pull requests as time permits. ONGOING (but almost done)
• Craig: finalize RSP agreement draft. DONE
• Craig: begin RSP form draft. DONE
• Demian/Mohan: make further progress on updating Open Data Sources wiki pages. ONGOING
• Leila: make progress on 2021 VuFind Summit video editing. DONE

Oliver will be attending in person, and may be able to lead the Introduction to VuFind session.

Mohan suggested that it would be good to announce plans for next year's Summit at the end of this year's; if we can manage an in-person event tied to WOLFcon, it would be good to let people know about that well in advance. We should find out the location of the next planned WOLFcon to determine the feasibility of this.

The VuFind Summit call for papers has closed, with seven submissions received (one of which is a two-part event). This seems to be enough content to support a two-day Summit; we could expand to three days if any PMC members which to present and have not already submitted proposals. Mohan wants to present about DOAJ/NepJol services – Demian will add a slot. Demian is willing to draft a schedule once we agree on an overall length.

Demian has opened pull request #2467 to get the code from the InTech Open wiki page merged into the project. There are still some outstanding TODOs that need to be addressed. Remaining wiki work is now tracked as a TODO on this pull request.

Demian also significantly trimmed back the Linked Data page, updating broken links where possible and removing outdated information. The page could certainly be improved, but at least it is less potentially misleading/time-wasting than before.

Remaining assignments:

• Mohan: review/edit/update MeSH, DoAJ and PubMed Central pages; add NepJol page.

Email updates still pending – progress has been made, but some work is still making its way through Villanova's IT ticket queue.

Work on the 8.1 release is nearly complete – there are currently just two in-progress pull requests (plus outstanding translation work) remaining. Demian proposes creating the release-8.1 branch and merging dev-9.0 into dev soon.

Craig has finalized the document and has drafted a mock-up of the submission form.

Scott from OLF has reviewed the result and approves of it.

Demian's questions/comments on Craig's submission form draft:

• Maybe we need some language at the top like “By submitting this form, you are expressing interest in the Registered Service Provider program. A member of the Project Management Committee will reach out to you upon receipt of the form to discuss further details; your initial submission does not obligate you to join the program.”
• Making country a free-text field rather than drop-down might reduce long-term maintenance issues.
• We should probably offer an “other” option in the services checkbox list.
• We should consider our options for the technical infrastructure behind the form; having a file upload box may complicate matters (though it's otherwise a good idea). Ere suggested https://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:bureaucracy as a possible technical solution.
• If we do include the file upload box, we should offer guidance in terms of min/max dimensions, aspect ratio and file size. Leila suggested that omitting the file upload may simplify things (since we have to communicate anyway).
• I think a question about target customers (not just languages supported, but also geographic regions) would be very useful here.
• I think the past contributions question is also a good idea, though maybe it could be reframed as “How long has your company been working with/supporting VuFind? Have you made any past contributions to the project?”
• I don't think there is a pressing need to include address/phone information in the form. If we need those details, we can obtain them through subsequent communication with the submitter – I imagine these might come into play as part of the invoicing step.
• Ere raised concerns about verifying the authenticity of submissions; Demian suggested that the fact that organizations will be invoiced probably serves for verification – they won't pay the invoice if they don't really want to join.

Next steps:

• Once submission form is ready, reach out to existing VuFind vendors to gauge interest and solicit feedback (this may also be a good time to discuss trademark compliance, which has been on the “future issues” list for a while).
• Create a wiki page from the RSP agreement and link it from GitHub and appropriate places in the wiki.
• Incorporate the RSP program into the wiki in a way that makes it clear how it relates to our existing membership model; perhaps we need a combined table of benefits to show how these things compare to each other.

All outstanding video editing work has been completed.

Some other possible items for the future:

• Develop a fundraising communication plan - after completion of Registered Service Provider work
• Develop a documentation maintenance plan
• Investigate Dokuwiki enhancements (“old page” alerts, “page ownership” mechanism)
• Community Call restructuring / marketing
• “Good first issue” highlighting
• Outreach to forks for new feature contributions
• Marketing project (better VuFind definition, website improvements, etc.)
• Publication / presentation efforts related to PMC and sustainability
• Look at It Take a Village Toolkit Governance Activities.
• Look at It Take a Village Toolkit Technology Activities.

Ere suggested that Dokuwiki enhancements might be a good topic for next month. Demian will add it to the agenda.

Demian also proposed Community Call discussion for the next call.

Demian also noted that Dokuwiki hasn't issued a release in quite some time (though its GitHub remains active); Ere suggested that XWiki might be an alternative if we need to migrate to a different platform in the future. A Dokuwiki to XWiki migration tool exists.

• ALL: review/comment on 8.1 pull requests as time permits.
• ALL: reply to Craig's RSP form draft with feedback, if you have any beyond what is captured in minutes here.
• Demian: draft VuFind Summit schedule; contact presenters; share results with PMC.
• Demian: announce (and implement) creation of release-8.1 branch / dev-9.0 merge.
• Demian: create wiki page for RSP Agreement; link from GitHub and other appropriate wiki pages; start work on benefits table.
• Demian/Mohan: make further progress on updating Open Data Sources wiki pages.
• Demian: add Dokuwiki plugins / Community Call revisions to next agenda.