The Latest Survey Results Are In!

Our first community poll on what features folks want was a huge success, with 76 people responding. Our second poll just wrapped up, and we managed to beat that number with a total of 80 responses. For having approximately 320 Islandora installations out there, 80 responses means we got input from roughly one quarter our users. Not too shabby!

We changed up how we presented the questions and also asked for a bit more info, so we have a little more to report on than just a ranked list of features this time around. We've published the anonymized data here if you're curious or want to follow along with this summary. Without further ado, here's what the community has told us.

Demographics

We asked folks to provide details like their job title and what solution(s) they are currently using. Most people kindly answered these questions even though they were optional, and from that we've categorized them broadly into the following groups.

Users
- Librarians (35.4%)
- Archivists (10.8%)
- Managers (18.5%)
Developers
- Programmers (24.6%)
- Dev / Ops (10.8%)

Added together, the users make up 64.6% of those who responded, heavily outweighing the 35.4% of developers who answered. This is an encouraging sign, as open source software is overwhelmingly developer oriented by nature. So it's good to know that the lion's share of feedback is coming from our user base.

With regard to the solutions people are currently using, we received the following details:

Islandora 8 (17.2%)
Islandora 7 (63.4%)
Islandora 6 (1.1%)
Other (18.3%)

The clear majority here is Islandora 7, which is great to see. Helping people transition from 7 to 8 is a high priority for the Islandora Foundation, so it's good to know that we're capturing feedback from those who have yet to make the switch. Interestingly, we received a total of 16 responses for Islandora 8, which means there's more out there in the wild than we're aware of!

Features

Here's all the features that were voted on, ranked by the amount of "I need this feature" responses that were received.

Feature Description	NEED	LIKE	DON'T CARE	UNCLEAR
Batch editing of metadata	54	22	2	2
Better documentation for migrating into Islandora 8	53	19	6	2
Better documentation for customizing metadata	49	25	4	2
Embargoes	47	20	10	3
Collection based access controls	45	30	2	3
Islandora 8 Accessibility Audit and Improvements	41	31	3	5
Pre-installation documentation on everything you'd want to know before making a production environment	38	34	3	5
Advanced boolean search as in Islandora 7	38	33	5	4
Make migrating from 7.x more manageable	36	20	18	6
A batch uploader that does not require terminal usage	35	32	9	4
Auditing functions to ensure all background jobs completed successfully	34	40	3	3
Documentation on upgrading each piece of software in Islandora 8	34	36	2	8
More written documentation for users	34	34	9	3
Collection management interface	33	33	1	13
Focus on the Drupal 9 upgrade	32	35	6	7
Integration for Google Scholar indexing	32	32	13	3
Improved ingest experience	31	41	5	3
Making migration from 7x more manageable	31	40	7	2
Documentation on pushing changes from development to staging to production environments	30	40	7	3
IP Restricted Access	28	36	12	4
Improved update process between versions	26	37	5	12
Import metadata from an XML record using the GUI	26	33	14	7
Fixity Auditing	25	47	4	4
Minimize resources needed to deploy Islandora 8	25	34	11	10
Multisite search and namespacing	25	21	28	6
Expand and improve preservation functionality	24	44	6	6
Views bulk operations to perform actions on more objects that the current UI allows	24	28	4	24
Linked data lookup (autocomplete subjects from LOC and more)	23	48	7	2
Dynamic Citation Generation	23	41	10	6
Provide a user interface for configuring RDF mappings	22	44	6	8
Examples of using Drupal's workflows to create editorial workflows.	22	38	8	12
Repository reporting/dashboarding	21	48	2	9
Better documentation for deploying Islandora 8 in the cloud	21	42	15	2
More intuitive default form	21	39	7	13
Multisite administration	20	24	30	6
Export metadata into an XML record using the GUI	19	40	15	6
Integrations with other library systems	18	56	3	3
Provide a GUI for migrations	18	46	13	3
More IIIF viewer options	18	45	6	11
Dashboard for background operations and their status	16	56	3	5
Enhance/Replace Carapace Theme	15	34	20	11
PDF to PDF/A conversion upon ingest	14	50	13	3
Multilingual OCR	13	49	15	3
Faster speed when provisioning an environment	13	40	18	9
Model uploaded file and all derivatives as a single media	13	31	3	33
More video documentation for users	10	47	21	2
Documentation for using the Learning-to-rank (LTR) module for Solr	7	24	6	43
Build default splash page with Layout Builder	6	34	22	18

Unsurprisingly, documentation is all over the top of that list. Certainly there will be a documentation sprint in our near future. There's also a few features that already have existing solutions out there that we can utilize. Batch editing has a few Drupal modules that work very well, and Bryan Brown from Florida State University has already developed an embargo module that is starting to get uptake in our community. In addition to embargoes, other Institutional Repository features ranked high, particuarly IP restricted access and Google Scholar integration.

One feature that has been in the top ten for both surveys but hasn't seen much love is accessibility. Living with someone who has a physical disability, I know all too well that the norm is for things to be inaccessible. Being accessible means going out of your way to take extra steps that most people don't prioritize because it doesn't affect them personally. In my opinion, an accessible Islandora isn't likely to happen without a concerted effort from the top to push the issue. It would be prudent for us to start taking steps towards improving accessibility, starting first with an audit of the software as it is now so that we can find out where we need to improve.

Next Steps

The Islandora Foundation will be organizing community sprints around these features. We'll try and get as many of these in that we can before the next release of Islandora 8. So be on the lookout for further announcements if you're interested in these features or want to help us build them.

On top of that, the Technical Advisory Group has is using the survey results to formulate a Technical Roadmap for the software. The roadmap will include things like our version support timeline, as well as strategic initiatives to give folks a sense of where the software is headed in the future.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to fill out this survey. It's not much effort, and it really helps give us a solid understanding of what the community needs so we can best serve you. As always, we couldn't do this without you!