2023-01-26 Meeting notes

Date

Attendees

Discussion items

TimeItemWhoNotes
5 min

Announcements

  • FOLIO Prioritization & Roadmap Working Group to meet January 25 at 9 AM CT (Jesse K. can share link)

The FOLIO Prioritization and Roadmap Working Group met for the first time yesterday and set their weekly meeting time (https://openlibraryfoundation.zoom.us/j/88924526057?pwd=bVA5S3BDRVB5TURRQkk4OEQzeSt2UT09)

They are reviewing what past groups have done and setting themselves up for the working group's goals.

Holly Mistlebauer is retiring after 20 years at Cornell University and is leaving the project. Holly was also the project manager for one of the predecessors to FOLIO, the Open Library Environment project. She has been a long participant in the FOLIO project and has worn many hats, including the early roadmap discussions before there was anything to show. In retirement, she is going to continue her volunteer efforts in agriculture in developing communities with a focus on making scholarship available to those people (as a part of "Research for Life").

30 minOnboarding Task Force report - slides

About welcoming new members with a presentation and a follow-up meeting. Offer to hook up new libraries with a mentor instituion. We envision reaching out to an institution when they sign a memorandum of understanding. The slide presentation today is a draft version of the onboarding presentation offered to new libraries.

Starting with asking what they are interested in and what needs the FOLIO community has. This is followed with an introduction to FOLIO as software and community. Talk about where FOLIO is open and who owns the process. Include an overview of history starting in 2016 to the present. Introduce the governance overview, resourcing/budget, community aspects (WOLFcon, regional SIGs, community-driven development), and implementation strategies (self-hosted, public and commercial hosting, and new projects). After the community is a review of the software architecture and the development process (including a description of the various roles in the project). The last part of the presentation is a review of the communication tools and a list of ways to get involved.

The onboarding group has already started thinking of additional parts for a presentation after this first meeting.

About FOLIO's "open": noting that this project is different from others because of the rules and processes involved that aren't as "open" as other projects. What FOLIO means by "open"? The rules and processes themselves are open to modification by the community. They are rules to help the project, not to stifle openness.

"FOLIO" itself is an adjective that has many meanings. This presentation could help bring clarity to that.

When selecting mentors, it would be best to select a library that migrated off of the same ILS.

Community members are invited to review the presentation and give comments to the task force members over the next two weeks.

30 min

Reports from Community Council, Technical Council, Product Owners, and Release Planning


Tod Olson 


Khalilah Gambrell 
 

Kristin Martin 

Community Council has elected to sunset the Discuss platform.

Community Council (Kirstin Kemner-Heek)

  • Action Item for PC: Okay to officially close down the Discuss platform?

Report from meetings: Nov. 28, 2022, Jan. 01 and 23, 2023  (next meeting is on Feb., 13, 2023 ) 

  • Council elections: preparations will start early and will be let by Hkaplanian and the CC chairs  → qualified volunteers are very welcome! 
  • Treasurer's update: funding is sufficient so far for the ongoing expenses
  • Technical Editor funding initiative: $ 15,800 are committed → means 4 month funding ($3520,00 per month) and a gap of  $1800.- for 5 month to let Marcia Borenstaijn work along with Paul Kloppenborg for onboarding, training and support. CC chair works with OLF accountant at the details.
  • Filling Anton's Q/A role: Discussion about understanding his jobs scope and qualification  - no conclusion
  • Ongoing process on the work of the Functional Criteria Group together with PC → Kristin Martin
  • New FOLIO webside: still work in progress of the 2nd half
  • Resourcing group: work was presented and comments asked: (draft slide deck | working doc}  - results are to be presented at the next meeting
  • Tri-Council Meeting  preparation in CC
  • Email list proposal: agreement on setting up an "announce" email list - still work in progress
  • Proposed change to FOLIO Governance Model
    • specify how to handle ties in elections: not decided yet, but proposal to delegated decision to each council 
    • separate out membership levels and benefits: change was agreed and done: FOLIO Membership Levels and FOLIO Governance Model 
      • "Member organizations will be relied upon to provide the resources that make FOLIO viable and sustainable. The Community Council shall be responsible for determining and updating the FOLIO Membership Levels, including contribution amounts and any associated benefits."

Technical Council (Tod Olson)

This update covers about two months, with a lull for the Holidays.

There has been a broad trend of topics that involve governance and other sticky issues.

  • Many topics have been complicated, have spanned multiple meetings. This has prompted the TC to reserve and extra meeting time for topics that need dedicated discussion beyond the regular Wednesday meeting.
    • Mondays, 11:00 AM Eastern, with notes in the same area as our regular meetings.
  • mod-entities-links , mod-bulk-operations passed technical evaluation.
  • mod-settings : practical matters around desired changes to how mod-configuration stores settings resulted in creating a new module, mod-settings. PC will be familiar with this as it has prompted questions/discussion about the module review process in both PC and TC.
    • The module has been accepted by both PC and TC.
    • Development team has been very conscientious about the review process and engaging with the TC.
    • TC still has an outstanding question about whether we are to endorse centralized configuration or decentralized configuration as the direction for FOLIO. There are many tradeoffs, and a subgroup is in the works to take up the topic and make a recommendation.
    • TC continues to review the module review process as we get more experience.
  • Proposal around how we use Kafka (particularly Kafka topics) to help contain AWS hosting costs. in process.
  • TC Charter, with discussion of precise scope and intent of current charter. In process, soon to wrap up.
  • TC objectives and initiatives for coming years. Very long process, soon to wrap up. 
  • Proposal for how we managing the complex web of tools/software frameworks used by FOLIO and the dependencies among them. In process.

Product Owners (via Khalilah Gambrell)

  • Need more Product Owners
    • Holly Mistlebauer retiring, need fees/fines PO most urgently, especially to direct completion of work of UNAM team
      • Holly has provided a transition plan (still in draft)
      • Cornelia will manage Orchid Bugfest – THANK YOU 
      • Holly and I discussed UNAM no longer developing for Orchid so that Holly can focus on testing development.
      • IF testing cannot be completed by Holly's last day then Khalilah (yes me) will either complete testing or identify a PO/community member who can complete testing. 
    • New PO: Christine Schultz-Richert (EBSCO) will focus on MARC cataloging requirements (Spitfire dev team) has already been introduced to the quickMARC subgroup 
    • Orchid Release (April 2023) | dashboard 
      • Sprint starting this Monday (Jan 30) is the final sprint to include new development in Orchid
      •  Key stat: 76 features > 50 New Features
    • POs are wrapping up Orchid while defining Poppy scope. 

Release Planning (Kristin Martin)

  • Meet on Monday to review schedules for Poppy and Quesnalia
  • Still would like to have more information shared in advanced regarding meetings, scope, and activities on wiki
  • Also brief discussion on the future of the Prokopovych team, which is depleted of resources. This has been an ongoing issue and the responsibility of the team remains unclear.
    • What role does PC have in managing development teams and what teams are there?
    • What role does release planning have for managing team composition?

There was a lengthy discussion of the tasks that the Prokopovych team and how they will be taken up by others in the project. Can a team made up of resources from different organizations work?

5 minAgenda items for future meetingsall

Chat log

00:10:36	Owen Stephens:	Did we have an announcement at PC that National Library of Australia selected Folio before Xmas? I’ve seen messages on Slack but can’t remember if it was announced here - but quite possible it happened before Xmas!
00:11:05	Kristin Martin:	I do not remember that - very good to know!
00:11:15	Owen Stephens:	https://www.nla.gov.au/stories/news/2022/new-software-will-update-our-collection-management-system#
00:12:57	Owen Stephens:	Migrating from Voyager
00:15:18	Ian Walls:	where is the 'ish' coming from?
00:15:42	Mark Veksler:	Replying to "where is the 'ish' c..."

my sentiment exactly :-)
00:16:34	Alexis Manheim:	Replying to "where is the 'ish' c..."

That was my idea. Because there are parameters and community based protocols to follow and that isn't always clear.
00:17:04	Ian Walls:	apologies, Alexis, but I don't understand what you mean
00:19:18	Alexis Manheim:	Let's talk after the presentation...maybe we need a different word?
00:19:49	Tiewei Liu:	Can we change “Shanghai Public Libraryâ€Ā to “Shanghai Libraryâ€Ā? It's both public and academic.
00:20:16	Martina Schildt | VZG:	Yes, sorry, we will change that after the presentation
00:20:21	Martina Schildt | VZG:	Thanks for the hint
00:20:40	Tiewei Liu:	Thank you!ðŸ‘Ā
00:23:58	Tod Olson:	Similarly, could you change Chicago to UChicago?
00:24:32	Martina Schildt | VZG:	Sure, thanks
00:24:33	Owen Stephens:	Is there/should there be anything for those who might find it to participate via the usual channels (thinking specifically of those who either can’t full engage using English or those who are in timezones that are outside easy participation in SIG meetings)
00:25:40	Tiewei Liu:	How about translate it to other languages?
00:27:19	Owen Stephens:	I’d say that is pretty usual for open source tbh
00:27:38	Owen Stephens:	It’s very common for there to be some level of gatekeeping
00:28:45	Ian Walls:	thank you for clarifying, Alexis. having community norms is pretty normal open source projects, but all of those protocols are still just agreements negotiated by community members communicate how we expect to wokr together
00:29:47	Brooks Travis:	Agreed, Ian
00:35:32	Della Porta, Ann:	I will volunteer LC to test the presentation, since I think we're still newbies
00:37:53	Gang Zhou | SHL:	Build a new page to collect all information , in wiki ?
00:38:13	Owen Stephens:	Unknown unknowns
00:39:27	Della Porta, Ann:	I agree that it would be helpful to have a page on how to get started in the Folio Community.
00:41:28	Martina Schildt | VZG:	I need to run to another meeting, thanks all! And all the best to you Holly!
00:46:58	Jesse Koennecke (he/him):	TEEAL and Agora are very important for agriculture in the developing world.  Great projects.
00:48:18	Charlotte Whitt:	Yeah, I remember that meeting in Copenhagen, at the IT University <3 (where I took my Master)
00:48:52	Kirstin Kemner-Heek:	We will miss you! All the best!
00:49:52	Khalilah Gambrell (EBSCO):	Thank you, Holly. All the best on your next journey. I need to leave for another meeting.
00:51:13	Tiewei Liu:	Holly also worked with developers that the China community contributed to the Prokorovich team. Really good collaboration. We will miss you, Holly!
00:51:51	Ian Walls:	Pizza the Hat
00:53:43	Owen Stephens:	There have been a couple of questions about running folio on their recently
00:54:27	Ian Walls:	the function of a forum/Q&A where folks can ask questions and look up previous answers must still be met
00:55:20	Kristin Martin:	Thanks @Ian - I can share that directly with CC, but I'm guessing you already have shared your thoughts directly.
00:56:43	Ian Walls:	I believe I did bring it up; maintaining such a thing is plenty of work, and unfortunately I'm not able to dedicate the time to do it right now myself. but we here the need in implementers all the time
01:09:07	Owen Stephens:	The release timetable has been announced on Slack which doesn’t say it’s still a draft if that’s the case
01:17:11	Paul Kloppenborg | BSZ:	I have to go. Thanks and good day
01:20:43	Karen Newbery:	And on top of that, keeping up with the technical debt as releases continue.
01:22:02	Owen Stephens:	But they are pretty important modules
01:22:20	Karen Newbery:	I need to drop off. Have a good day!
01:22:28	Marc Johnson:	They are important. Which is more of an argument for having a well staffed team look after them.
01:22:31	Charlotte Whitt:	Here the wiki page where the modules the Prokopovych responsibilities are listed: https://wiki.folio.org/display/REL/Team+vs+module+responsibility+matrix
01:25:47	Marc Johnson:	The TC has no funding and it’s members are not necessarily skilled in development.

That is a fundamental shift in the governance model and what it means to be a TC member.
01:26:22	Ian Walls:	yes, it is a major shift. and I think a potentially positive one
01:27:37	Marc Johnson:	My assumption is that the TAMU team will be directed by TAMU
01:32:58	Ian Walls:	gotta run to a customer meeting; cheers, all