Attending: Leila Gonzales, Demian Katz, André Lahmann, Ere Maijala, Josef Moravec, Peter Murray, Mohan Pradhan

Apologies: Oliver Goldschmidt, Chris Hallberg, Craig Murdoch, Hajo Seng

• Demian/Mohan: make further progress on documentation updates. ONGOING
• Mohan: Share example eBook with PMC when ready (for discussion of “supports the project” logo/wording). ONGOING
• Chris: Demonstrate using GitHub stats to describe the work in a release for 9.1. ONGOING
• Chris: Review accessibility of current vufind.org theme. ONGOING
• André / Craig: Begin a literature review to assess the need for/value of an article about PMC development and sustainability. ONGOING
• Leila / André: Begin investigating possible applications of AI tools to support the community. ONGOING
• ALL: Come prepared to discuss documentation maintenance. DONE
• ALL: Come prepared to discuss Summit logistics. DONE

This year's goals:

• Release versions 10.0 and 10.1
• Hold a VuFind® Summit in Fall, 2024 linked with WOLFcon in some way
• Develop a documentation maintenance plan
• Investigate possible uses of AI for documentation, support, code reviews, etc.
• Perform literature review in Code4lib Journal/other sources regarding PMC/sustainability; draft and contribute an article if there is a sufficient need/gap.
• Marketing improvements (review vufind.org accessibility, improve content as needed)

Demian began brainstorming regarding the documentation maintenance plan. We should define the scope of what we are maintaining:

• Wiki
• Website
• “Learning VuFind®” book
• Anything else?
  • Videos?

There should be an annual review process, and we should identify what needs to be reviewed. Perhaps:

• Top X pages in usage report for past year
• All pages in the sitemap that have not been updated in X years.

Demian will share a usage report to evaluate top X pages; he will talk to Susan about the sitemap review process.

Demian and André discussed measuring usage of the Learning VuFind book. Both ReadTheDocs and GitHub offer some statistics; it appears that ReadTheDocs usage is non-existent, which is not surprising due to most links and references pointing directly to GitHub. Studying the GitHub statistics may be worthwhile.

Peter raised the issue of version-specific references in the documentation. Should we have a cut-off time (e.g. five years) after which such references are removed? Given that many installations still report versions that are 6-10 years old, should we do outreach to some of these organizations prior to making a decision?

Ere suggested that cut-off time could be based on RedHat extended support of PHP versions required by the releases (though maybe that's too long, given the very long extended life of things like PHP 7.4).

Suggestion: set cut-off at five years, include good revision description indicating version notes removed, put note at top saying to look at revision history.

Demian will next work on updating Koha documentation based on Mohan's input.

Demian has drafted a general-purpose top-level security page. He will add it to the site index after this meeting.

Demian has updated the MeSH page using updated MeSH information shared by Mohan.

Demian and Mohan successfully completed an experiment to harvest DOAJ and NepJol using RecordManager. However, due to limitations of the hardware used in the experiment, performance is not strong enough to permit this index to be shared with the general public at this time. However, the knowledge gained in the process can be used to update the DOAJ wiki page and to create a NepJol one. This will be done as time permits.

Work is still pending on the PubMed Central “open data sources” page. Mohan also plans to contribute documentation related to integrating SubjectsPlus (which recently had example XSLT import configs added to the project) and Moodle (which is still being researched).

Mohan is working on adding more video content and illustrated instructions at training.vufind.org; while the main wiki is primarily text-based and designed for long-term accuracy, Mohan plans to use the training site for more detailed and time-sensitive documentation in support of his classes and book release. He views the training sessions as a valuable opportunity to field test the content of the books.

Leila did some initial experimentation with using ChatGPT3.5 to update documentation, sharing sample outputs with the group by email. She also investigated AI chatbot options, identifying cost as a primary hurdle. She suggested another possible application of AI: running the SourceForge mailing list email text through classifiers and summarizers and using it to generate a knowledge base of how-tos.

Craig reports, regarding the literature review: “I haven’t found any research or article published along the lines of what we’re thinking about (at least not in the last 10 years). It seems to be a gap in the formal literature so worth us moving ahead. In general, I’d say the literature is dominated by technical and/or niche topics, and something about formation of PMC/governance/sustainability is important.”

André has only just begun his part of the review, and would like a little more time to complete it; he wants to look beyond the library literature and see if he can find something equivalent relating to general open source development.

Hajo is unfortunately unable to fulfill Treasurer duties at this time. Demian will reach out to Craig (who previously volunteered as a backup treasurer) to see if he is still interested in the post.

Mohan has been working to expand training and documentation development in South/South East Asia and has built a significant partnership between multiple institutions. He is requesting travel support for an in-person meeting in India to coordinate future training and documentation plans. If successful, this investment should lead to funds being raised for the project.

The main objective of this travel is to field test books that are going to be released. He is planning to publish the following books:

1. Koha integrated with VuFind® and WordPress.
2. DSpace integrated with VuFind®
3. WordPress integrated with SubjectsPlus, VuFind® and Koha ILS
4. VuFind® integrated with Koha, DSpace, WordPress and Moodle
5. SubjectsPlus integrated with VuFind® and WordPress.

The plan is for 50% of the proceeds of book sales to be invested back into the project; details may change slightly depending on platform fees, etc.

Mohan will report on the outcomes of the trip afterwards.

The $500 request was approved. Demian will work with Mohan to determine the exact invoicing process with OLF.

Lehigh University joined the project as a new sponsor, starting this month.

The text of the act was finalized late last year, and it appears that most of the concerns of open source communities have been addressed reasonably. This article might be of interest: EU CRA: What does it mean for open source?

WOLFcon registration fees are likely to be:

• Early Bird: $350 US - February 15-July 31
• Regular: $425 US - August 1-September 13 (11 days ahead of conference)
• Virtual: $50 - anytime

It sounds like there may be a travel support budget to help speakers reach the conference, though this is likely to only be able to cover a relatively small number of people.

The German event will take place on September 30 and October 1.

André is currently investigating the possibilities related to hybrid meeting format.

Demian will continue investigating options for more affordable participation in the online meeting if we hold it through WOLFcon.

Oliver will be temporarily reducing his working hours this year; he has asked if he can step back from PMC during that period, returning in 2025.

Craig expressed support of Oliver's proposal by email prior to the meeting. There were no objections during the meeting.

Some other possible items for the future:

• “Good first issue” highlighting
• Investigate getting a VPAT
• Outreach to forks for new feature contributions
• Look at It Take a Village Toolkit Governance Activities.
• Look at It Take a Village Toolkit Technology Activities.

We are seeing high numbers of spam registrations in the wiki. These accounts do not appear to be actually doing anything – no spam pages have been created – but they are still potentially wasting resources by creating a large user file. Demian wrote a simple script to filter out some obvious bad accounts, but further cleanup is needed, and we may want to introduce some kind of approval process.

• Demian/Mohan: make further progress on documentation updates.
• Mohan: Share example eBook with PMC when ready (for discussion of “supports the project” logo/wording).
• Chris: Demonstrate using GitHub stats to describe the work in a release for 9.1.
• Chris: Review accessibility of current vufind.org theme.
• André / Craig: Complete literature review to assess the need for/value of an article about PMC development and sustainability.
• Leila / André: Continue investigating possible applications of AI tools to support the community.
• Demian: Share 2023 web analytics for vufind.org, to inform documentation maintenance plan. Include GitHub usage of Learning VuFind® book if possible/appropriate.
• Demian: Review notes from last year to determine “old page” cut-off when reviewing wiki sitemap.
• Demian: Discuss treasurer position with Craig.
• Demian / Mohan: talk to OLF about reimbursement process for Mohan's travel request.
• André / Demian: continue investigating/evaluating options for remote participation in this year's Summit.
• Demian: Monitor growth of spam account sign-ups in wiki.