Hydra-In-A-Box Project Accomplishments and What’s Next

“Hyku” is the result of a thirty-month project to develop a scalable, performant, and multi-tenant digital content repository solution within the Samvera (previously known as Hydra) framework. This work was announced in 2015 by Stanford University, DuraSpace, and the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) through a generous grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).

The grant project is now drawing to a close. The list of accomplishments over the past two and a half years has exceeded expectations and spurred momentum for Hyku to continue past the grant term.

DuraSpace CEO, Debra Hanken Kurtz says, “I’m heartened by the pledges of continued financial and development support we’ve received for the next phase of Hyku. The mix of participation and ownership we’re seeing is really exciting.”

Details of the work complete, pending, and news about next steps for the project are on the DuraSpace blog. Highlights include results from the HykuDirect Pilot Program and Gap Assessment Report, a new IMLS grant pre-proposal, a pledge program, and news of two service providers launching Hyku services.

Hannah Frost, Manager, Digital Library Product and Service Management at Stanford Libraries says, “Clearly there is a great deal of momentum and drive among the community to continue moving Hyku forward.”

Frost and Mike Giarlo, Technical Manager on the project, will present at Samvera Connect to share with the Samvera community the outcomes and lessons of the project in order to inform and align the Samvera development roadmap with feedback collected during this project.

DPLA’s interim Executive Director Michele Kimpton says, “We believe supporting Hyku, an open source community based platform that can be run in the cloud, will be of great utility to our network. It will increase access to content by connecting key infrastructural pieces with DPLA hubs, current Samvera partners, and prospective adopters to create a vibrant, participatory community of adopters and contributors.”

All granting partners feel the outcomes of this grant period strongly support the objectives of developing a national, digital platform to equip all libraries, archives, museums, and cultural heritage institutions with a community-based repository system, enabling discovery, interoperability, and reuse of digital resources by people from this country and around the world.

If you’re interested in Hyku and its mission of lowering the barrier of entry to open-source digital repository services, please email contact@hykudirect.org to discuss an investment of staff time or funds to the project. We look forward to working together with you!

To keep up-to-date on Hyku, please subscribe to the DuraSpace Digest, selecting the option “Hydra-in-a-Box.”