How to make an Islandora Interest Group

What is an Islandora Interest Group?

Islandora Interest Groups are Islandora Community Members that come together around a particular topic relevant to the Islandora ecosystem.

An Islandora “Interest Group” is a recognized entity that can benefit from support and communication with the Islandora Foundation through the Islandora Coordinating Committee. Interest Groups play an important role in providing a way for critical user community input, ideas, and improvements to be communicated through to Islandora platform development and governance channels. Interest Groups help foster wider collaboration and sustainability.

Why would I want to create an Interest Group?

The benefits of being an Islandora interest group are:

• Opportunities for input, project participation, and partnerships with Foundation initiatives and wider community activities that relate to IG scope.
• Deeper connection and collaboration with other arms of Islandora governance.
• Support from the Islandora Coordinating Committee (ICC) in the form of advice, communication, opportunities via the Islandora Open Meeting and other events, and (pending approval and available funding), financial support for projects.

What are the responsibilities if I make an Interest group?

• Be open to all interested Islandora community members.
• Adhere to the Islandora Code of Conduct
• Communicate with the community as appropriate via Slack and the islandora@googlegroups.com mailing list.
• Maintain an updated Terms of Reference, along with a list of current members, convener, and contact information in the Interest Group’s islandora-community wiki page
• Develop and maintain a schedule of regular meetings/activities and communicate them via appropriate communication channels.
• Have a single point of contact to liaise regularly with the Islandora Coordinating Committee.
• Provide updates to the community about your work as appropriate.
• Communicate clearly with the ICC if the Interest Group is going on hiatus or has completed its work.

Note:If your interest group does not fulfill these responsibilities, the Foundation may remove or recategorize the interest group within our own documentation to indicate that it doesn’t appear to be active.

What are the Islandora Coordinating Committee’s responsibilities to Interest Groups?

• Maintain an agenda item in meetings related to Interest Group updates, and invite conveners to meetings to provide those updates.
• Provide advice and vet proposals relating to Islandora codebase and community, and forward to other governance bodies as appropriate.
• Help coordinate interest group updates to the Islandora community as appropriate (for example, through open meetings)
• Help the Interest group develop a repository in the Interest Group GitHub organization, if they want to, by coordinating with Foundation staff. Examples of other repositories are available in the Islandora Interest Groups GitHub Organization

Terms of reference

Each interest group is responsible for developing its own terms of reference including the following:

• The name of the interest group and an introduction to the purpose and scope of the group.
• A reference to the Islandora Code of Conduct.
• Any specific directives defining goals and tasks.
• The interest group’s plans for communicating internally and with the ICC.
• Roles and responsibilities of the convener (i.e. to initiate meetings and communicate with the ICC)

I'm ready to make an interest group, what do I do now?

• There are many starting points for interest groups, from conversations that evolve into meetings, to people making open calls on the mailing list or Slack organization inviting members. The Islandora Foundation will often pick up or amplify messaging that you circulate when starting an interest group.

• If you have an established interest group and want to have your interest group recognized by the Foundation, please reach out to the current chair of the Islandora Coordinating Committee to arrange to share your developed Terms of Reference and attend an ICC meeting.