2016-11-21

Date

Monday, November 21

2:00 - 3:00 PM ET, 1:00 - 2:00 PM CT, 12:00 - 1:00 PM MT, 11:00 PM - 12:00 PM PT

Call-in info is:

Number: 888-354-0094

Access code: 731627

Notetaker: Esmé Cowles (Unlicensed)


Attendees: Sally, Esmé, Ed, Ann, Max, Patrick, Scott, Cory, Chris, Terry R., Michael, James, Brad, Kari, Jason

Not able to attend: Terry C., Mark, Rachel, Noah

Goals:

  • Update from sub-teams, in particular on 2016 - 2017 workplans
  • Two discussion topics:
    • Request to re-think Instance types
    • Thoughts on a potential by-law change?
  • Update from Program Manager 

Agenda items:

Time

Item

Who

Notes

5 min

Roll call and actions from previous meetings

All

Actions:

  • All TAC members  - encouraged to review the draft FAQ document and share your thoughts. Team is still keen for feedback particularly on platform.
  • Still interested in feedback, or any ideas that people come up with.
  • Have mostly done that — only Technical Documentation Files left
  • Subteams to try to complete workplans by Nov meeting so others on TAC can review if interested.
  • Will talk about during subteam updates.

5 min

Thanks to TAC members for recent listserv contributions:

  • Listserv
  • Code, documentation and bug reporting


  • Pull requests from Program Team, and maybe Jason
  • Listserv contributions from Terry R., Mark, Dave, Patrick, Chris, Max, Noah, Lori, Terry C.
5 minProgram update

Staffing

  • Recruitments underway for Program Manager (5 candidates thus far) and Technical Lead (2 candidates interviewed)


Development

Restoration of Development

  • Hudson Molongo started to provide development in November and is expected to continue doing so through June 2017. Emphasis this month has been on bug fixes prioritized by the Prioritization sub-team, as well as approval of submitted pull requests.

PUI enhancement

  • A version of the enhanced public interface is available at http://pui.hudmol.com/. This will change as enhancements are implemented.
  • Expectation is that all targeted enhancements will be completed and a tested and finished public interface will be ready for release at the end of March. However, a test candidate may not be ready until mid-January, instead of the previously stated date of mid-December.

Specifications

  1. Agents: a new data model and wire frames have been drafted. Export maps and objects for MARC and EAC authority records are being drafted.
  2. Reports: the specification--including requirement, examples of definitions, and a list of report targets–is in a final phase of review and should be delivered for community review before the end of the year.
  3. OAI-PMH responder: waiting on a some minor revisions before being shared with the community for comment
  4. Rights Management: Consisting of an enhanced data model, wire frames, and migration requirements, this specification is completed and has been shared for community review. The community review resulted in request for user stories clarifying how organizations would use the rights module, especially in comparison to use and access notes in the resource module.


Membership

  • 308 total members (48 very large, 35 large, 60 medium, 54 small, and 111 very small)


Training

  • Basics and Digital Objects, Five Colleges (Northampton, MA, Oct. 10-11), Christine Di Bella, Rachel Onuf, presenters; Stacie Williams, trainer-in-training
  • Basics, Tufts University (Medford, MA, Oct. 25-26), Christine Di Bella and Brad Westbrook, presenters, Miloche Kottman, trainer-in-training
  • Basics and Digital Objects, University of Virginia (Charlottesville, VA, Oct. 31-Nov 2), Mark Custer and Noah Huffman, presenters
  • Basics, George Eastman Museum (Rochester, NY, Nov. 1-2), Brad Westbrook, presenter
  • Basics and Digital Objects, Hong Kong University (Nov. 14-16), Nancy Enneking and Brad Westbrook, presenters

Upcoming:

  • Basics, University of North Texas (Dallas / Fort Worth, TX, Dec. 1-2) Noah Huffman and Miloche Kottman, presenters
  • Basics, Northwestern University (Evanston, IL, Jan. 9-10 (Lisa Calahan and Stacie Williams, presenters


Conferences

  • Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums (Oct. 10-13, Phoenix, AZ)
  • Joint Meeting of the Society of Georgia and Society of Florida Archivists (Oct. 13-14, Savannah, GA)
  • LYRASIS Member Summit and All Staff meeting (Oct. 17-21, Atlanta, GA)
  • Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (Nov. 3-5, Annapolis, MD)
  • New England Museums Association (Nov. 11, Mystic, CT)
A 15 minCommitter Oversight sub-team update
  • Terry stepping down from leading the Committer Oversight sub-team in recognition of the fact that OSU's not implementing until next year, and this group would benefit from having an active implementer leading it.
  • Sally, Esme, Max, Patrick, and Brad have been looking at re-organizing ArchivesSpace GitHub organization and core committers group. Have decided to take a phased approach, implementing GitHub reorg first (will send proposal out soon), and and will wait for Tech Lead to be in place to setup core committers group.
Technical documentation sub-team update
  • Working on cleaning things up and getting initial FAQ together using Jekyll, but welcome any other thoughts.
Dev Prioritization sub-team update

Jason

  • Just sent a draft to the subteam members, including survey results and a description of how the results inform 1.5.3 release, and discussion of planning for 1st quarter of 2017. Looking forward to lots of activity with HM back on board.
Testing sub-team update

Ed

  • About 10 issues the team is starting to test
Migration sub-team update
Sally
  • HM talked about the roadmap work
  • Main focus on EAD 3 implementation and implementation principles proposed by Noah
  • First steps working on import/export mappings focusing on known areas of change from EAD 2002
Integrations sub-team update
  • Talked about work plan, which will continue over from last year
  • Want to create resources for people interested in integrating with ArchiveSpace, including motivation, examples, and approaches
  • Want to promote success stories and encourage new integrations
  • Interested in education/outreach — submitted proposal on integrations to SAA
15 min

3 discussion questions:

  • Request to re-think Instance types
  • Should we propose a by-law change?
  • Performance when working with AOs with large numbers of direct children

Three discussion questions:


  • Request to re-think Instance types
    • We've received a request to re-think how ArchivesSpace handles Instance Types. The rationale is that Instance Types are semantically meaningless (e.g. exports as a top container "label") but potentially misleads users into thinking this it's a place to record format/genre information.
    • Would any sub-teams have interest in looking into this issue further?
      • Is the suggestion to remove, or change, or more open ended? The question was about removing.
      • No clear subteam to address this, or volunteers. Should have a broader call for interest and how to handle this information if the feature is removed.
      • May want to consider other options, like not requiring it.


The Technical Advisory Council also partners and with other community members to help with TAC initiatives. The roles of these other contributors include:  

  • Invited affiliate contributors - External contributor with expertise relevant to particular TAC topic and/or task. These members are asked join a particular TAC sub-team for a period of time to help with a specific task, project or work area. These members are added by the Technical Advisory Council Chair and relevant subteam Lead. 
  • Program liaison - ArchivesSpace Program staff who work is funded by Membership Fees are encouraged to collaborate with the Councils and join relevant sub-team meetings as a means of ensuring the work of the Program, Council, and community align and are mutually supportive and beneficial. 
    • Is there any controversy or need to amend the by-laws? They seem pretty flexible, and so it seems fine for TAC to include other people as needed even if they're not spelled out in the by-laws. Some subteam leaders have asked about this. We can revisit if there is a need to have things more formalized.


    • defining process for handling out of cycle vacancies (in Article V Section 2)
      • This is covered in Article 5 Section 5 "Resignations, terminations, and vacancies"
      • Is there any need to better define this? No objections.
    • Also potentially the bullet in Article V Section 4 that calls out the responsibility of TAC to "review functional enhancements and priorities identified by the Users’ Advisory Council." → but maybe we leave this one for further reflection 
      • The joint UAC/TAC development prioritization group covers this.


  • Listserv discussion re. application performance when working with AOs with large numbers of direct children
    • There's been some similar discussion in the Fedora community — building a test script to demonstrate the problem and make it easier to test has been really helpful.
    • Also good to do some testing and document performance, using the Web inspector to see how long operations take. Good to check how this changes when you assign more memory to ArchivesSpace. Documenting what scale is supported with various specs would be helpful guidance to implementors.
    • Mainly a client-side problem trying to render tons of data, and will be discussed in the upcoming development prioritization meeting.

Next meeting time

Jan 16, 2017 - Patrick Galligan (Unlicensed) on deck to take notes.

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