LYRASIS and DuraSpace Announce Intent to Merge

From a LYRASIS Announcement:

LYRASIS and DuraSpace announce their intent to merge, forming a robust new home for Community-Supported Programs and Services.

LYRASIS, an innovative full-service technology and services nonprofit, and DuraSpace, which specializes in open source technologies, plan to join their world-class 501(c)(3) nonprofit teams in 2019. LYRASIS is a recognized leader in building and delivering solutions to academic and public libraries, museums, and archives. DuraSpace is a best of class team providing leadership and innovation for open technologies used by academic, scientific, cultural, technology and research communities.

The combined organization will serve over 1,200 members and 3,500 organizational users across the globe. With a vision of leading community focused innovation, the increased scale and sustainability of a combined organization will provide better value and benefits to members of LYRASIS and DuraSpace.

A new division of LYRASIS, the DuraSpace Community Supported Programs Division, will be formed to accelerate the pace of development for a combined 8 global open source technology communities, including DSpace, Fedora, VIVO, DuraCloud, ArchivesSpace, CollectionSpace, SimplyE public, and SimplyE academic. DuraSpace hosted services, DuraCloud, DSpaceDirect, and ArchivesDirect, will also transition to LYRASIS. In addition, a thought leadership division will be created that will combine the rich and diverse memberships of both organizations to collaboratively design and develop next generation solutions that include migration, integration, analytics, and hosting.

Robert Miller, LYRASIS CEO says “The DuraSpace contribution and commitment to openness as it applies to academic communities has always stood out to me. They have built a phenomenal team, attracted a blue ribbon board, and earned the support and trust of their prestigious members. We are honored to join together with DuraSpace. Our collective memberships will benefit from increased economies of scale and having a bigger seat at the table as we work together to design and build better end-to-end solutions. We are eager to add DuraSpace’s voice to ours.”

Erin Tripp, DuraSpace’s Executive Director explains that “While DuraSpace is in its strongest financial position ever, the synergies of joining our two organizations will allow us to leverage a larger organization and member base to amplify our voice. Our missions and memberships are already converging. Taking this next step to merge our organizations will provide access to staff and investment dollars to accelerate the pace of global, community-supported open source software development. Together, we can steward viable alternatives to proprietary products.”

Following a brief period to complete due diligence, the Boards of the two non-profit organizations will hold a merger vote. If affirmed, the merger will proceed at a pace to ensure minimal disruption to members and customers.

In the proposed merger between DuraSpace and LYRASIS, LYRASIS will remain the parent organization and legal entity. The DuraSpace brand, stewardship of DSpace, Fedora, and VIVO, and fiscal sponsorship supports will transition to the new DuraSpace Community Supported Programs Division of LYRASIS. DuraSpace hosted services (DuraCloud, DSpaceDirect, and ArchivesDirect) will also transition to LYRASIS.

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• A Letter From Robert Miller, Lyrasis CEO: “Amplifying Impact”

• Source Announcement

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