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As cultural heritage organizations seek solutions, open source, community-based, and commercial digital preservation systems and tools have proliferated. Nevertheless, given the magnitude of digital content and the requirements of specific file formats, institutions struggle to integrate disparate tools and systems to support their institutional preservation programs. The purpose of the panel discussion is to provide insights from on-the-ground implementations of current preservation tools and to consider the opportunities and challenges in deploying and integrating these tools with local digital content management processes.

Presented at Open Repositories 2016 in Dublin, Ireland The members of the Ontario Council of University Libraries required a viable and affordable offsite storage solution for their preservation programs. Existing options may have solved the needs in the short term, while creating myriad potential cost and jurisdictional issues down the road. The Ontario Library Research Cloud (OLRC) that we developed to address our needs is a geographically distributed 1.25 PB storage and computing network jointly developed by 11 of Ontario’s university libraries. The OLRC went into production in October 2015, with the development focus now shifting to the direct integration of repository applications with the OpenStack Swift storage. As the OLRC moves toward maturity, questions remain concerning both long-term costs as well as how to sensibly use and manage the computing capabilities offered by the infrastructure as it was built to support digital scholarship in Ontario. This presentation outlines what we propose is a replicable model for others looking to build massive shared solutions as well as seek input and commentary on both our cost and operational models.

Open source software isn’t really free. This might seem obvious to some, but there are many members of open source communities that consume rather than contribute; they use the software but are either unwilling or unable to engage with the community to write code, submit use cases, create documentation, or do any of the other things that make an open source project a success. Fortunately, things don't have to be this way. Over the past two years, the Fedora project has undertaken a great effort to revitalize not only the software but the community itself. By maintaining open, transparent communication, soliciting use cases, development, and testing from community members, and establishing a clear project governance structure, we have laid the groundwork for a successful community source project. At the same time, the Islandora and Hydra communities have pursued similar strategies to build and sustain their own communities and the broader Fedora community. This panel will feature a discussion on the recent successes of the Fedora community and future plans to continue raising the level of community engagement and project ownership.

Have you ever had an IT-related idea you want to implement, only to be told that your library doesn't have the resources, time or labour to help you? Chances are you have. You're also likely to have heard something about cloud computing as a way to get your ideas moving quickly without having to worry about time or infrastructure. Is cloud computing the end of systems departments as we know it? Or is it merely another tool in a librarian's arsenal?

The Sherman Centre for Digital Scholarship began operation in 2011 at McMaster University. A common question is, what do you do? In this session we will discuss the formation and purpose of the centre and the role of the library and librarians. While centres vary from institution to institution, our purpose here is to outline specifically what we do and how it fits into the larger academic context. Github & Heroku.

Amy Buckland facilitates this panel discussion about failing: projects that went nowhere, sideways, or just combusted and what was learned from the experience. These panelists, experts on the topic, will convince us that failing can be fun and worthwhile. (video)

There is a lot of buzz about cloud or internet-based computing and what it offers to libraries, but what is it really all about? This session will cover four main points: what is a cloud, why you might not want to use external cloud services, different local cloud setups, and what you do with your cloud once you have it.

The presentation will briefly cover the Digital Commons product by Berkeley Electronic Press as used by McMaster University Libraries. Moreover, the presentation will cover the theses and dissertation submission and review process, the journal creation & publishing process, department/faculty taxonomy structure for the IR, and the relationship between bepress and McMaster University Libraries.

Description: This will be a 40-45 minute talk on the benefits of using open source technology in building digital collections with 15-20 minute demonstration. The rest of the time will be left for questions & discussion. Benefits: 1) Explain the benefits of Open Source technology over proprietary software. 2) Show the collaborative benefits of using Open Source software with digital collections

A quick talk on the benefits of using Drupal as a digital collection platform over proprietary platforms like OCLC's CONTENTdm.

First on the list of the ACRL Research Committees top 10 assumptions for the future of academic libraries and librarians is that there will be an increased emphasis on digitizing collections, preserving digital archives and improving methods of data storage and retrieval. McMaster University has initiated a major digitization project, Peace and War in the 20th Century. Join us as we share our experiences in the first year of our life in the digital trenches! If you are planning a digital project be sure to bring your questions.

The McMaster "Digital Commons" institutional repository http://digitalcommons.mcmaster.ca/about.html seeks to preserve and share the intellectual work of our community. Institutional repositories expand access to research, reassert academic control over scholarship, reduce the monopoly power of journal publishers, and increase institutional visibility, status and public value (SPARC, 2002). They provide a disaggregated, distributed model for the dissemination and preservation of scholarly research. This presentation will introduce you to the benefits of contributing your work to McMaster’s institutional repository. Learn how Digital Commons makes your publications easily found by search engines such as Google and how the Library can host your scholarly open access e‐journal.

A panel presentation about using the open-source content management system Drupal as a back-end for your library web site and library applications. We’ll discuss why we chose Drupal, out-of-the box vs. custom built applications, must-have modules, theming issues, design and implementation scenarios, and more. Panel members are from academic and public libraries.