This page captures planning efforts to formalize the VuFind Community, as discussed during the 2020 VuFind Summit.

The contents of this section have been moved to the Roles and Responsibilities page.

The list of roles above does not explicitly account for decision-making within the project. How do we set priorities, make architectural decisions, etc.? Does the project need a “lead architect” role, or some kind of technical steering committee? This is an important gap that will need to be filled, but depending on the mechanism decided upon, the role(s) involved might vary.

OSS Watch's Governance Models document provides some helpful food for thought.

Would it be possible/helpful to set up regional networks (for example, for language communities other than English) to support the project with particular audiences? How would these networks interact with the top-level project?

How do we determine assignment of roles to individuals? Is there a fixed term for serving in each role? What happens if someone is suddenly unable to fulfill their obligations? How do we keep things running in an emergency?

This section lists known and potential expenses that the project will need to meet in order to survive.

• Annual OLF membership fees.

• Emergency fund (to hire temporary staff to aid in a leadership transition)
• Grants/bounties (to encourage development of key features, or expand project participation)
• Server fees (if we switch from institution-supported project resources to cloud-hosted services)
• Training costs (to hire trainers and cover other expenses for ongoing training programs)

The project needs a formal mechanism for receiving support. Some questions to discuss:

• Do we need to define specific levels/tiers of financial support? Do we need different criteria/options for institutions vs. vendors vs. individuals?
• What are the benefits of support?
  • A listing on the website?
  • Increased/discounted access to events?
  • Privileged access to certain project roles?
  • Weighted input into decision-making/prioritization?
• Do we need a formal mechanism for recognizing non-financial support (e.g. commitment to assign institutional resources to a particular role for a particular amount of time)?
• How can we recognize regional differences (currencies/economic status/language/etc.)?
• Options beyond membership model:
  • Grant-seeking: this would require a new project role for grant-writing and management; potentially very time-consuming, and with only intermittent/uncertain benefits (but possibility of large windfalls)
  • Service-provision: can the community run training courses or provide services like hosting? This incurs additional expenses and responsibilities. Do we need a formal, well-defined partnership model for these types of services?
  • Sale of content (e.g. books) – how would we structure this, and how would we differentiate it from free offerings in a fair/useful way? Perhaps a “pay what you wish” model would be a viable option, but this would require infrastructure to set up.
  • Donation solicitations – many projects ask for donations on their download screen; would this be appropriate for us? Again, administration is a cost.