Meeting Minutes for 06/06/2023

Discussion Topics

• VuFind (Minute 00:30)
  • Marmot will be able to provide VuFind to their academic members.
  • Pika originated from VuFind many years ago and diverged away from the original code base and functionality of VuFind.
  • Pika is designed to meet the unique needs of the public library.
  • VuFind is a specialized software designed by Villanova University to cater specifically to the needs of academic libraries.
  • After careful consideration, Marmot has determined that it is not feasible to incorporate both the grouping feature in Pika that is effective for public libraries and the necessary browsing options and additional features required by academic libraries.
  • Marmot is nearly ready to put an implementation plan together for VuFind. C.J. has been working on a test version of VuFind that she demoed for the Marmot academic member libraries. Marmot has a VuFind governance document that spells out what Marmot staff can support and maintain with VuFind, and what belongs to the larger VuFind community.    
  • During the June 8 and 9 Council meeting, Marmot will give a final presentation and discussion with the academic libraries about their interest in migrating to VuFind. The goal is to create a schedule for the migration process.  C.J.'s code will undergo a code review by the VuFind community. The aim is to integrate the code into the main VuFind code base.

Demo of new features, bug fixes, and documentation for the upcoming release (Minute 4:03)

• Release Notes

   Discussion of development priorities for the next release (Minute 13:29)

• Islandora Upgrade (Minute 14:02)
  • The Marmot Digital Archive Committee members are well aware that Islandora 2 upgrade is using updated versions of Drupal. 
  • The new version of Islandora has some pretty nifty functionality 
  • Our team at Marmot is currently working on upgrading Islandora. To ensure a smooth integration with Pika Islandora, Pascal and Chris have established a testing environment to try different components and determine any necessary development work. 
  • Throughout the year, Marmot will keep everyone informed about the progress of this project.     
• Ubuntu migrations (Minute 15:12) 
  • Chris has been working on migrating to Ubuntu, while Pika has been running on CentOS servers. At Marmot, it was decided to migrate most of our servers to the Ubuntu operating system.  
  • Chris has been doing custom development to ensure that Pika operates effectively within this new operating system.
  • Marmot has migrated the MLN2 members and two discovery partners, Sacramento and Aurora.  The discovery partners and Marmot servers for MLN1 libraries will be migrated alphabetically.  
  • We are resolving the Apache web server issues by migrating from CentSO to Ubuntu. This migration is positively impacting the Pika software overall.
• Accessibility improvements (Minute 17:18)
  • Pika team member C.J. has been dedicated to enhancing accessibility features in Pika. This ensures we comply with the Colorado law's (WCAG 2.1) accessibility standards by July 1, 2024.  
  • C.J. has thoroughly reviewed Pika and found that a large component of Pika complies with the web accessibility standards. The components have the A level, if not the AA level.
  • C.J. is creating a punch list to bring Pika to the AA level. Additionally, C.J. is collaborating with each library to ensure that the colors, fonts, and text sizes used in their unique instances of Pika comply with the relevant theme. This effort aims to ensure consistency across all libraries' versions of Pika.

The next meeting is Tuesday, September 5th, 2023