We are excited to announce that Wellcome Collection will be working with Artefactual on a community-building effort for Archivematica. Artefactual has always wanted to make Archivematica more of a community-driven project, with input and collaboration from a healthy ecosystem of developers as well as users. In practice, engaging with external developers and accepting code contributions from them has not always been easy, since external contributions require code review, testing, merging and documenting, activities which are typically not funded.
Wellcome Collection recently made the decision to make Archivematica a component of its digital preservation program and has wholeheartedly embraced Archivematica as an open-source project. As part of that, Wellcome Collection would like both to contribute code and make it easier for other developers to do so. As a first step, Wellcome is providing funding to expand automated test coverage for Archivematica, since manual testing can be one of the most resource-intensive activities required for code contributions and release management.
Wellcome Collection and Artefactual intend to continue to work together to define processes for supporting each other’s work – for example, through mutual code review, so that development contributions made by Wellcome Collection as it scales up its Archivematica implementation are included in public releases of the software. We also plan to work together to extend this collaborative model to other organizations interested in contributing to the overall health of Archivematica. In the meantime, the automated testing work is now underway and will result in significant improvements to how we manage testing and public releases!
About Wellcome Collection
Wellcome Collection is the free museum and library for the incurably curious. Inspired by the medical objects and curiosities collected by Henry Wellcome, it connects science, medicine, life and art. Through its exhibitions, live programming, and digital and publishing activity, it makes thought provoking content which aims to challenge how we think and feel about health.
Wellcome Collection is part of Wellcome, which exists to improve health by helping great ideas to thrive. We support researchers, we take on big health challenges, we campaign for better science, and we help everyone get involved with science and health research. We are a politically and financially independent foundation.