Roles and Responsibilities

Roles and Responsibilities

VuFind® is a community effort, and its success is dependent upon the work of the community. The community's Governance Document explains how you can contribute to the project in both small and large ways. While the Governance Document is designed to be fairly general, this page elaborates with more specific details about jobs within the project, and the individuals who are currently performing those jobs.

Project Management Committee

The work of the VuFind® community is coordinated by the Project Management Committee, which is led by the PMC Community Manager and which meets monthly. The current members of the PMC are:

Oliver Goldschmidt (member since April 2021, renewed April 2023) - Oliver is a technically focused librarian at Hamburg University of Technology in Germany. He is using VuFind® since 2010, starting with the very first version of VuFind® and was involved with developing the sharding functions of VuFind®, the PAIA/DAIA ILS drivers and some more things.
Leila Gonzales (member since April 2021, renewed April 2023) - Leila is a Technical Specialist at the American Geosciences Institute. She has been involved with the VuFind® community since 2015, and has been a contributor to the code base in the area of geographic search features.
Chris Hallberg (member since April 2021, renewed April 2023) - Chris is the lead front end developer for VuFind® and has been a major contributor since 2011. He does web development and collection analytics at Falvey Library, Villanova University.
Demian Katz (Community Manager since April 2021, renewed April 2023) - Demian is the Director of Library Technology at Falvey Library, Villanova University. He has held a leadership role in the VuFind® community since 2009 and is a major contributor to the code base. (LinkedIn profile)
André Lahmann (member since April 2021, renewed April 2023) - André is a research librarian and project manager at Leipzig University Library where he manages the development and maintenance of the VuFind®-based catalogues of the finc community. He has been involved with the VuFind® community since 2014.
Ere Maijala (member since April 2021, renewed April 2023) - Ere is an Information System Specialist at the National Library of Finland. He is the lead developer of Finna, a VuFind®-based public interface for Finnish Archives, Museums and Libraries, and has been a contributor to the code base since 2013.
Josef Moravec (member since April 2023) - Josef is a developer at Moravian Library in Brno, working mainly on Knihovny.cz - a united interface for Czech libraries catalogues and services based on VuFind®. He has been a translator and contributor for VuFind® since 2012.
Craig Murdoch (member since April 2021, renewed April 2023) - Craig is the Online and Open Initiatives Manager at the Auckland University of Technology Library. He has been involved with the VuFind® community since 2020 and has a particular interest in the sustainability of open source projects.
Mohan Pradhan (member since April 2021, renewed April 2023) - Mohan is the current Chairman of HealthNet Nepal and a retired Professor of Library and Information Science at Tribhuvan University. He has been an active member of the VuFind® community since 2012, with a particular focus on making the software more accessible to users, particularly in the developing world, through training courses and LiveDVD development.
Hajo Seng (member since April 2021) - Hajo is mathematician; he works as technical project manager of the VuFind®-based catalogues at the Hamburg University Library and lead developer of the beluga-core consortium. He is in touch with VuFind® since 2012 and has as well contributed a bit to the code base. Moreover he is the disabled-employee officer of the library.

If you wish to reach the PMC in a public forum, sending an email to the vufind-tech mailing list is the easiest option. For private communication, you can reach out to Demian Katz, the current PMC chair, at demian DOT katz AT villanova DOT edu, and he can forward your message to the entire group.

Open Library Foundation Roles

As described in the Governance Document, certain OLF roles are assigned by the PMC. The current individuals in those roles are:

Primary Manager: Demian Katz
Treasurer: Craig Murdoch
Secretary: Mohan Pradhan

Contributors, Committers, and Communication

Anyone can become a VuFind® Contributor simply by engaging with the project, whether that is by coding, documentation, support or advocacy. Committers are just Contributors who have worked with the project long enough to earn a bit more responsibility. These roles, and possible contributions, are described in much more detail in the Governance Document.

If you are interested in engaging with the project or need to reach out to a Committer for assistance, please use the vufind-tech mailing list as the primary point of contact.

Other Specific Roles

Certain specific jobs within the VuFind® community are not explicitly detailed in the Governance Document, but they are nonetheless critical to the project's success. This page lists those jobs, and the individuals who are currently responsible for ensuring their completion.

If you have expertise in any of these areas and would like to contribute time to the community to help ensure the successful completion of these jobs, please reach out to the vufind-tech mailing list and we would love to work with you!

Critical Administrative Roles

Community Manager	Chris Hallberg	Present
Maintain code of conduct and other community standards; facilitate/monitor project inclusiveness; respond to code of conduct incidents. To report an instance of abuse, harassment, or otherwise unacceptable behavior, reach Chris Hallberg at challber@villanova.edu.
Internationalization Manager	Demian Katz	Present
As part of the release cycle, coordinate the activity of volunteer translators to keep VuFind®'s language files up to date with newly-added strings.
Project Server Administrator	Demian Katz	Present
Patch/maintain/monitor the operating system and software on server(s) hosting tools used by the VuFind® community. This currently includes: Dokuwiki, Jenkins, VuFind® demo instance, VuFind® website (reverse proxy on top of GitHub pages)

Project Software Administrator(s)

Manage key software applications for the project. These include:

Dokuwiki Administrator	Demian Katz	Present
Use escalated privileges to manage Dokuwiki application; receive/monitor notices of page changes to prevent/revert malicious updates.
GitHub Administrator	Demian Katz	Present
Use escalated privileges to manage GitHub resources (vufind-org community, releases, etc.)
Jenkins Administrator	Demian Katz	Present
Use escalated privileges to manage Jenkins application; update plugins/configurations as needed.
JIRA Administrator	Demian Katz	Present
Use escalated privileges to manage JIRA application.
SourceForge Administrator	Demian Katz	Present
Use escalated privileges to manage SourceForge resources (news feed, mailing lists, downloads).
Release Manager	Demian Katz	Present
Schedule releases, ensure that outstanding tasks are completed on schedule, and work through the release checklist whenever a new version is released.

Communication Roles

Community Call Host	Demian Katz	Present
Plan monthly Community Calls (set agendas) and moderate/host the events. This also includes ensuring that a viable communication platform is available for the calls.
Newsletter Editor	Demian Katz	Present
Monitor ongoing development (pull requests, JIRA tickets, Community Calls, etc.) in order to maintain the activity lists for the monthly newsletter; an executive summary also needs to be written each month to highlight key developments.
Summit Planners	Varies from year to year
Take responsibility for planning annual conferences: developing calls for papers, scheduling, communication platform selection, event hosting, post-event surveying, etc.
Video Editor(s)	Chris Hallberg, Leila Gonzales	Present
Edit tutorial videos, Summit outputs, etc.; polish/correct machine-generated transcripts.

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