Making the Move: Hands-on migrations to Fedora 6.x
Arran Griffith Dan Field
Fedora is the open-source, digital repository system underpinning a wide variety of digital libraries and archives. It is designed to store, manage, and preserve digital content and is used by over 300 institutions around the world. Fedora has seen iterations over its 20+ year existence, but its core principles, focused on long-term digital preservation, have remained the same. Fedora is synonymous with stability and has long-remained a household name in the digital repository landscape.

The most recent major version of Fedora, Fedora 6.x, was released 3 years ago and there has been increasing migration efforts toward 6.x from users in outdated and unsupported older versions of the software. Fedora 6.x has sparked renewed interest in Fedora implementers because of the choice to incorporate the Oxford Common File Layout (OCFL) within the persistence layer. Fedora 6.x is being well received, and new and unique use cases are being discovered regularly as the community continues to expand.

The Fedora program is committed to supporting all migration efforts to 6.x. This workshop will provide a unique opportunity for attendees to “bring their own data” and conduct a live migration with the help and assistance of the Fedora technical team. Facilitators will work alongside participants to provide suggestions, offer best practices, gather use cases, and troubleshoot in real-time. While the workshop will be focused on the Fedora migration, if time permits (and depending on the complexity of the use cases), facilitators may be able to assist with configurations with common front-end solutions like Islandora and some Samvera applications. 

Workshop goals and objectives:
Introduce and familiarize participants with Fedora migration tools and processes.
Provide hands-on migration assistance with real-word data (or sample data if required).
Execute a migration to Fedora 6.x using available tooling and documentation.
Provide attendees with detailed information on available support channels, documentation and where and how to seek assistance beyond the workshop.

Proposed Workshop Structure:
1. Brief overview of the new features included in Fedora 6.x.
2. Introduction to Fedora 6.x migration tooling and documentation.
3. Open discussion about migration needs, use cases, barriers etc.
4. Facilitation of hands-on Fedora migrations.
approaches to preservation scaling up