The Hydra project started in 2008 as a collaborative, community effort to create a common set of tools that could support flexible repository solutions based on the Fedora repository system for managing different collections of digital assets. The four initial participants - Hull, Virginia, Stanford and Fedora - have seen the community grow to 35 Partners, all making their own contribution to the ongoing development of the software and the community underpinning this. The open source software can now be deployed according to need; from a set of tools for local customisation (Hyrax), through to turnkey solutions for general (Hyku) and multimedia (Avalon) repositories.
Reflecting the importance of the community in enabling the Hydra project and that the initiative is no longer a project but an ongoing concern, the Partners recently agreed to a change in name. The project has thus now become the Samvera Community. Samvera is an Icelandic term for togetherness or 'bringing together'. This reflects the future development of the Samvera software through collaborative initiatives and ongoing support for each other in creating repository solutions.
Further information can be found at http://www.samvera.org