WebWise - Digital Public Library of America

The third and final workshop I attended on the Preconference day at WebWise in Baltimore on March 6th was about the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).  I'd vaguely heard of this project, but really had no idea what it was about previously.  If I were to have guessed, I'd have supposed that it was something like the existing Internet Archive (which it's really not).  I felt much more informed by the end of the session.  The presenters were Emily Gore and Amy Rudersdorf, both of the DPLA.

Emily opened with an overview of the project. What is the DPLA?  It's goal is to build our national digital library. DPLA will make cultural and scientific heritage of humanity available, free of charge, for all.  The focus is on materials from the United States.  They are currently in the planning phase, led by the Berkman Center at Harvard University.  It's funded by the Sloan Foundation an the Arcadia Fund, with a goal to transition to independent 501c3 non-profit in 2013.  The new Executive Director, Dan Cohen, was announced the previous day, March 5.  He'll begin work in April. DPLA will add additional staff, but will remain small.  A new board is now in place, replacing a Steering Committee.  The initial launch will take place in about a month, on April 18-19 at the Boston Public Library.

Elements of the DPLA: Code - Where possible it will make use of existing free and open source code, built on open standards.  Metadata - Sharable, available under CC0 license to allow for unrestricted reuse, goal to operate as part of the global linked data environment, resolves to digital objects.  Content - Incorporate all types of content beginning with "green lighted" & public domain content that resolves to digital objects. Tools & services - Provide tools and services for enhanced use of content and content creation.  Community - Participatory platform - WE are the DPLA.

Metadata: Board Statement:  1. The vast majority of Metadata is not subject to copyright restriction.  2. The DPLA's Partners share the DPLA's commitment to open, sharable metadata.  3. The DPLA asserts no rights over its database of metadata and waives all claims for infringement thereof.  4.  Free and unencumbered access to metadata.

 

The content will come from various cultural heritage agencies including libraries of all types, archives, museums, historical societies etc.  Content will be wide ranging, including photos, manuscripts, books, scientific collections, art & artifacts, scholarly works, newspapers, government documents, records and more.

 

Tools & services:  Being built on top of the API. Some apps that have been created to date from their AppFests and Hackathons.  A web portal is being built.

Community:  Workstreams include: audience participation, content scope, financial business models, legal issues, technical aspects.  Listservs and other ways to stay involved can be found at http://dp.la/get-involved. They're also offering lots of sessions and workshops. They have a tradition of using a graphic artist at all meetings to illustrate imaginative images based on the ideas being generated.

The Digital Hubs Pilot Project was launched in Sept. 2012.  The goal is to take existing collaboratives and aggregate the content.  The approach for the pilot is to work with 6 states and 1 region.  The service hubs are Mountain West Digital Library, digital libraries of MA, GA, KY, MN, OR, SC.  Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage (MDCH) could potentially become a digital hub in the future, but is not signed on at this time.  The advantage to this approach is that they are using existing infrastructures, existing aggregation and existing metadata services.

As of April 2013 the Digital Hubs will offer a full menu of standardized digital services to local institutions, including digitization, metadata consultation, data aggregation, storage services, locally hosted community outreach programs bringing users in contact with digital content of local relevance, and exhibit building.  Each service hub will coordinate an exhibition around a topic. You can hear John Butler of the Minnesota Digital Library discuss their role as a Digital Hub on Youtube.  Each Digital Hub is taking a topic and building an exhibition around it.  See Europeana exhibitions - The Homeland of Migrating Groups for an example exhibition.

Content hubs are currently being finalized.  Harvard was announced as first Content Hub.  Other large cultural heritage organizations are to follow, such as NARA and Smithsonian.  These are organizations who have a lot of content.

Timeline: There is a two-year timetable that began in October 2012.  In March/April 2013 the preparation of metadata and content previews for harvest is taking place. They will harvest the existing metadata from Content Service Hubs and make it available as part of the initial launch of DPLA.  They'll develop exhibitions for April release.  Throughout the two years there will be new digitization and metadata, aggregation, new services, including for many Service Hubs the addition of new partners, and targeted engagement programming.

The process for hubs is to harvest metadata via OAI-PMH (a protocol for metadata) led by DPLA technical staff. They'll perform quality control on the big metadata soup and send feedback regarding metadata quality to the content hub.  Reharvest if needed.

How will people access the DPLA content?  There will be multiple ways, including a web portal and an API.  They are contracting with iFactory to build a new web site for the DPLA, to launch in April.  Open API will provide access to all of the metadata tools.

If you think you're interested in contributing your content to the DPLA in the future, complete the form at http://dp.la/about/digital-hubs-pilot-project/hubs-inquiries
 

Amy then talked about how to prepare your data to be a part of the DPLA.  No rights are reserved for the metadata.  This allows for maximum use and reuse and allows for interoperability on a global scale.  Open, raw data, is required to operate in a Linked Open Data environment.  The discussion got pretty technical here, with lots of discussion about metadata, aggregators, and open data.

Standard rights statements can be found at
http://pro.europeana.eu/web/guest/available-rights-statements

More on DPLA can be found at http://dp.la

So from the presentation I learned that DPLA is not what I thought it could have been.  DPLA is about stuff.  It's not about e-reading or audio bestsellers.  At its core, it's not really about what most of us would consider to be the primary focus of public libraries.  Could our WHILBR contribute it's content to DPLA?  Maybe, but I'm not ready to jump in so early.  Let's see if MDCH participates in the next couple of years and decide how to proceed based on their experience.

-Joe