[Dspace-general] DSpace Governance Advisory Board Formed

[Julie Harford Walker]

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DSpace Federation Governance Advisory Board Formed

http://wiki.dspace.org/DSpaceGovernance

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It is with great pleasure that MIT Libraries and HP Labs announce the 
formation of the DSpace Federation Governance Advisory Board.  This ad hoc 
board is being convened to draft a recommendation for governance and 
funding mechanisms to advance the DSpace community.  The Board, nominated 
from the community and invited by MIT and HP, is comprised of leaders from 
higher education and industry that are stakeholders in the DSpace community 
as well as experts on open source software.  The members of the board are:

Mr. Chris Rusbridge, Chair (Director, Digital Curation Centre, UK)
Dr. Adrian Burton (Project Leader, Australian Partnership for Sustainable 
Repositories)
Dr. Matthew Cockerill (Publisher, BioMed Central)
Ms. Susan Gibbons (Assistant Dean for Public Services & Collection 
Development, University of Rochester)
Ms. Geneva Henry (Executive Director, Digital Library Initiative, Rice 
University)
Dr. James Hilton (Associate Provost for Academic, Information & 
Instructional Technology Affairs, University of Michigan)
Dr. Clifford Lynch (Executive Director, Coalition for Networked Information)
Ms. Carole Moore (University Chief Librarian, University of Toronto)
Dr. Siobhan O'Mahony (Assistant Professor of Business Administration, 
Harvard Business School)
Dr. A.R.D. Prasad (Associate Professor, Documentation and Research Training 
Centre, Indian Statistical Institute)
Mr. Nick Wainwright (Research Director, Digital Media System Department, HP 
Labs)
Mr. Peter Walgemoed (Director, Carelliance BV, Netherlands)
Ms. Ann Wolpert (Director, MIT Libraries)

It was agreed at the 2005 User Group meeting at Cambridge University that 
the growing DSpace community has reached a critical inflection point where 
it may benefit from some central organization and decision-making beyond 
the efforts of HP and MIT, with formal participation from the broader 
community.  Establishing governance and, possibly, funding mechanisms for 
the DSpace open source community will help to ensure that the technology 
platform remains sound, protecting the investment that institutions have 
made.  There are no proven sustainability models, however, as open source 
software is relatively new and a disruptive force within the software 
industry.  The challenge for this board is to provide feedback to HP and 
MIT on the options for an innovative, but practical, plan for DSpace that 
fosters its active, decentralized community of users and contributors while 
providing an appropriate level of centralized support and guidance.

The advisory board will meet in-person once, on March 30-31, 2006 at 
MIT.  The group will continue to meet via conference calls, if necessary, 
to expand upon or resolve any outstanding issues.  In keeping with the open 
source software philosophy, the proceedings and recommendations of the 
advisory board will be shared with the entire community and your input will 
be solicited throughout the process.

Given the emerging significance of open source software, this board will be 
tackling a timely and important subject.  Updates will be sent to 
DSpace-general and posted on  http://wiki.dspace.org/DSpaceGovernance. Stay 
tuned for more news about this ground-breaking activity!

Sincerely,

Julie Walker
Senior Business Strategist
MIT Libraries
jhwalker at mit.edu