Spheres of Community Building: ScholarSphere and Sufia

In fall 2012 Penn State released ScholarSphere, a repository

service leveraging the Hydra/Fedora technology stack.
ScholarSphere supports self-deposit of research materials, for
preservation and access.

Shortly after ScholarSphere went into production, we launched
work on Sua with other Hydra community members. Sua, the
engine that powers ScholarSphere and provides its baseline
functionality, facilitates sharing of the code base.

Our focus has been on community-based collaborations to
propel iterative design and development and to enhance
usability. These include the creation of Sua, as well as early
engagement of stakeholders, such as faculty and students,
through use case discussions and usability testing.


By: Patricia Hswe, Michael Giarlo, and Daniel Coughlin
Hydra/Fedora-based architecture supporting ScholarSphere

TASK - Viewing and revising your
ScholarSphere Prole
ScholarSphere allows you to choose les to
highlight in your user prole. Try highlighting a
le.
Were you able to highlight a le? How easy
was the process to complete?
View your ScholarSphere prole page.
Does the highlighted le appear on your
prole?
On your prole page, can you nd a list of
all of the les you have uploaded? What
are your reactions to the location and
appearance of this list?

Above:
Contributors to
Sua

At left:
Description of
Sua in GitHub
About ScholarSphere and Sua
ScholarSphere UI after logging in View of Prole page Some results from 2013 user survey

CLher vlews of role page show:
Soclal neLwork llnks relevanL Lo user
LaLesL les uploaded
users who may do on behalf of"
deposlLs (l.e., proxy deposlLs)

Sample usability testing task
LxcerpL of resulLs fromuser survey dlsLrlbuLed
ln summer 2013, where 1 = leasL deslrable,
and 3 = mosL deslrable.