There are three governance bodies. The original collaborators, plus some newer members, form the Samvera Steering Group. That group oversees legal and administrative aspects of the project. A second body is made up of institutional partners. Over two dozen institutions are formal partners. The Samvera developers group is the third group and is made up of contributors to the Samvera software.
Use
Samvera is primarily used in libraries and digital repositories. It was originally developed to make use of metadata defined by the Library of Congress's Metadata Object Description Schema standard. Samvera implements the Opinionated Metadata gem to create domain-specific languages out of complex XML standards such as MODS. Other metadata standards, such as Dublin Core and Encoded Archival Description, are also employed in Samvera implementations. Samvera allows storage of any type of digital files for the purposes of access and/or digital archiving. It is suited to both large and small collections, and is being used in some cases to allow faculty and researchers to self-deposit their own digital research materials. The concept of Samvera "heads" is unique to this repository software. Each head is a Ruby on Rails application that provides a user experience and set of specific functionalities to a certain user community using content and metadata that may be shared with other such heads. For example, a faculty member may use a certain Samvera head to crop, fine-tune, and submit a set of images that is relevant to their research. A casual user may use a different Samvera head to browse these images without the clutter of all the photo editing and submission capabilities. Finally, a librarian user may access yet another Samvera head to curate an online exhibit of research at their University, using the photographs submitted by the faculty member but employing a special curatorial interface. Samvera has been modified to meet special needs, such as the development of GeoHydra at Stanford University.
Derivatives
Due to its extensive list ofdependencies, Samvera is difficult for smaller institutions to implement. To make this software more feasible for such institutions, the Digital Public Library of America, Stanford University, and DuraSpace partnered on a grant project from the Institute for Museum and Library Services called "Hydra-in-a-box". The goal of this project is to extend the Hydra codebase to "build, bundle, and promote a feature-rich, robust, flexible digital repository that is easy to install, configure, and maintain."
