---
title: "Governance Community"
canonical: "https://community.cdcp.info/space/CDCP/108003329/Governance%20Community"
format: markdown
---
The establishment of the open source partnership, and governance of  the open source platform code was put in place in January 2022. The structures and representation will be reviewed in 2024.

The **Project Board** is responsible for leading on the strategic vision and direction of the platform and open-source project and provide support to Steering Group. It is currently chaired by Dr Jessica Gardner (Librarian, Cambridge University Library), and has representatives from each of the three founding partners (associate directors and senior business leads).

The **Steering Group** is responsible for delivery of the CDP roadmap, management of the platform and project and provides support to Developers Group. It is accountable to the Project Board. The Steering Group is chaired by Ian Gifford (University of Manchester), and representation from each of the founding institutions (technical/ development leads and special collections representatives).

## Community Governance Structure

![image](media://7b8812bd-bf43-4f36-93ac-83fd536077b7)

**Curators' Forum**

The forum brings together curators from across the libraries, to share experiences, current projects and ambitions for working with collections on the Platform, put people in contact with each other and provide a space for colleagues to talk to each other about what’s working well, spark new ideas and collaborations, and offer support. Membership of the forum also includes colleagues who bridge the curatorial and development roles. 


**Developers Forum**

This group brings together software developers from Cambridge, Lancaster and Manchester to discuss recent work on the platform and plan and collaborate on future features. It’s provides a space to find common ground on planned functionality and share and promote the work we have done.   We discuss a wide range of development topics from bug fixes to major features and share ideas on how to make improvements, and work together to improve the platform for all. 


**Metadata Forum**

An informal group including members from Cambridge, Lancaster, Manchester and Oxford meets once a month to discuss matters relating to the creation and use of TEI datasets for research and for publication. While there is no specific connection to the Cambridge Digital Collections platform, part of the discussion inevitably focuses on the two main platforms for surfacing our TEI data to the web – the Digital Collections platform itself and the Oxford Manuscript Catalogue platform. Practically this entails discussing how a consolidated approach to the creation of datasets will both create efficiencies in the processing of data for these platforms, and also large, compatible datasets for research.