Community

Participants in the GeoBlacklight community come from a variety of professional and intellectual backgrounds (including librarians, software developers, metadata specialists, applied researchers, and others), but we share a common interest in making reliable and high-quality geospatial data easily accessible to members of the research community and the broader public. Many of us work in libraries and other cultural heritage institutions that deploy (or are planning to deploy) GeoBlacklight instances to disseminate and publicize their spatial data collections.

Discovery services and metadata are key challenges for organizations who provide geospatial data. GeoBlacklight connects expertise from the digital library and geospatial communities to provide a better experience for users to find geospatial data.

Anyone interested in spatial data infrastructures, libraries, GIS, maps, data curation, open source software, and related topics, is welcome to join us. Depending on their skills and interests, participants contribute to the community in any number of ways (for instance, by attending meetings, writing documentation, developing metadata best practices, engaging in outreach, and writing code). Participating in the community is especially beneficial to those who are implementing or maintaining GeoBlacklight as a spatial data discovery interface within their own home institutions.

Join the Community

• Volunteer for a Community Role

  We have several designated roles for building and sustaining our community.

  Read about our roles and view vacancies.

• Join a Workgroup or Interest Group

  We have short term and ongoing groups devoted to specific topics. Or, start a new one!

  View our current groups

• Follow our Google Group

  Follow general project discussions and feature announcements.

  Join the GeoBlacklight Google Group

• Chat on Slack

  Chat with others in the community and to work through technical questions.

  Join GeoBlacklight Slack

• Attend a Monthly Community Meeting

  The GeoBlacklight Community Meeting takes place on the second Wednesday of every month. The meetings are open to anyone interested in hearing more about the status of the GeoBlacklight software and associated projects.

  Read past meeting agendas

• Participate in a Community Sprint

  The GeoBlacklight Community collaborates on a 2-week sprint every Winter and Summer. Participation in the sprint is open to anyone interested in working on GeoBlacklight. While similar to a traditional code sprint, the GeoBlacklight Community Sprints also include tackling issues around documentation, metadata, community governance, and more.

  Read about our sprints

• Discuss on GitHub

  Find a bug you want to report? Is documentation missing or unclear? Would you like to suggest a new feature? Anyone can create an issue on GeoBlacklight's GitHub issue tracker.

  Browse the GeoBlacklight Github organization

• Share Metadata

  GeoBlacklight gets even better when organizations share metadata. Contribute your metadata to OpenGeoMetadata or use it to populate your own GeoBlacklight installation.

  Visit OpenGeoMetadata

Community Roles

Administrative Roles

Meeting Facilitators: Karen Majewicz + 1 vacancy

• Manage Google calendar
• Set up and host monthly meetings
• Set up and host sprint standups
• Prepare agendas

Platform Management Team: 2 vacancies

• Manage GitHub users and roles
• Manage Google group permissions, roles, etc.
• Manage Google Drive members
• Maintain Slack

Documentation Roles

Public Content Manager: 1 vacancy

• Keep the public website(s) up to date
• Write periodic blog posts, including sprint wrap-up posts

Technical Writing Lead: 1 vacancy

• Keep track of what code, metadata, and tutorials need updating
• Manage GitHub issues related to documentation
• Coordinate volunteers to update documentation as necessary

Technical Roles

Designated Code Mergers: see GitHub Teams

• Members of the GeoBlacklight Developers team in GitHub
• Review pull requests on behalf of the team, or assign individual code reviewers based on expertise

Release Coordinators: 2 vacancies

• Cut tags and releases in the GitHub repository, and write release notes
• Publish the GeoBlacklight Ruby gem
• Publish Javascript to npm

Workgroups and Interest Groups

• Issue Triage Workgroup

  Meets quarterly to review and prioritize GitHub issues related to code.

  • Eliot Jordan
  • Eric Larson
  • Karen Majewicz
  • Keith Jenkins
  • Maura Carbone

• Governance Workgroup

  Improves our communication around change management, connected projects, and community roles.

  • Karen Majewicz
  • Becky Seifried
  • Eliot Jordan

• Georeferencing Interest Group

  Discusses georeferencing projects and strategies to enhance GeoBlacklight’s georeferenced map capabilities.

  • Adam Cox
  • Alex Marden
  • Eliot Jordan
  • Kim Leaman
  • Marc McGee
  • Michael Shensky
  • Stephen Appel

Contributing Code and Documentation

GeoBlacklight is a collaborative open source project and contributions are welcome. This contributing guide is borrowed in part from the Samvera Contributing Guide and the Blacklight Contributing Wiki.

If you would like to contribute to the code base, see For Developers for information about setting up a development environment, and read our contributing guidelines.

To contribute to documentation, go to this website's repository on GitHub.

Who can contribute?

Anyone is welcome to contribute to GeoBlacklight. We follow a set of contribution practices to maintain a technically sustainable and stable software project for everyone.

Reporting issues

Did you find a bug in GeoBlacklight or interested in a new feature? Report it by creating an issue on our GitHub Issue Tracker.

• You will need to have a GitHub account
• For bugs, please include the following information:
  • Provide a descriptive summary
  • Explain the expected behavior
  • Explain the actual behavior
  • Provide steps to reproduce the actual behavior

GeoBlacklight Institutional Contributors

GeoBlacklight has been collaboratively developed by affiliates of the following institutions:

• Auraria Library
• Big Ten Academic Alliance
• Cornell University
• MIT Libraries
• Harvard University Library
• Johns Hopkins University
• New York University Libraries
• Princeton University Library
• Stanford University Libraries
• University of California San Diego
• University of California Berkeley
• University of California Santa Barbara
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• University of Massachusetts Amherst
• University of Minnesota Libraries
• University of Pennsylvania Libraries
• The University of Texas at Austin
• University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Feedback

Did we miss your institution? Have a suggestion for this website? Create an issue on the GeoBlacklight Website Github page here.