Urban Libraries
Council Webinar.
Fri 3/23/12
Part 1:
“What is
DPLA? It is a 2 year planning project
bringing together a large and diverse group of stakeholders to plan for great
coherent national access to knowledge – an updated version of the great
American public library of the early 20th Century, free to all.”
The IMLS is a strong supporter of the DPLA because it
fits right in with the IMLS’ vision, mission, and strategic goals.
“Planning for a
large-scale digital public library to make museum, library, and archive
information available, free of charge, to all.”
DPLA is managed
by the Berkman Center at Harvard and
funded by the Sloan Foundation.
It includes
working groups focusing on governance, content, technology, and legal issues.
The Proof of
Concept phase ends April 2013.
Many federal
partners are involved, including content-owners Government Printing Office (GPO), Library of Congress (LoC),
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA),
and the Smithsonian. IMLS
is the facilitator and the state and local government connector.
Another big
provider of content is the Digital Collections and Content Registry (DCCR) out of the University of Illinois,Urbana-Champaign. It’s a service operated with the IMLS for
over 10 years, and it contains metadata for 1 million items from 1,000
collections of 200 organizations, items digitized with IMLS funds. Its large collection of metadata and
identified best practices support the DPLA effort.
DCCR has 2 foci
- Increased interoperability among digital collections.
- Improved presentation and discovery of digital collections.
Some of the
steps involved in creating a blueprint for a National Digital Public Library:
- Convening to identify key concerns/opportunities for expanded public library participation in national digitization efforts.
- Fall 2011: Survey of more than 200 public libraries to create a preliminary agenda.
- November 2011: A forum in Los Angeles funded by the IMLS/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation offered a variety of presentations and audience discussion sessions.
- Spring and Summer 2012: Los Angeles Public Library and her partners will disseminate/invite comments on the “next steps.”
Part 2:
Building a
Digital Public Library of America
(DPLA)
John Palfrey
Harvard Law
The DPLA is trying to create the learning environments of the future -
what libraries can be.
It’s in
development - a 2 year planning process. It’s an emerging
project/process.
Intended to be multi-media.
Slide 1 – Picture of the private study of Oliver Wendall Holmes, Jr.
Slide 2 –
Picture of the interior of the Stone Library in Adams National Historic Park in Quincy, MA.
How do we make a
virtual something as compelling as these physical libraries were? The DPLA process is partially an investigation into how to create compelling and really
functional learning environments for the 21st Century. Also an
inquiry into how we can define them instead of having them defined for us, both
by the tech and the tech creators.
“Free
to all” is currently in crisis. Libraries can’t be less able to provide “Free
to all” in the future than we have in the past. We must maintain that ideal.
The Cloud is where
data/knowledge is moving to. And the
amount of data is growing unbelievably fast. In fact, “90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last 2 years alone.” The idea is for the DPLA to make sure the
best of cloud computing is not solely in the hands of the corporations.
Access to
content changes from one day to the next, as with Penguin. Not ideal.
The DPLA would partner with
corporations and other data producers.
It’d bring together information architects and experts on
information dissemination.
Currently, those working on
the DPLA don’t really know what they’re doing - by
design. It’s supposed to be a discovery process – discussing and
ruminating on ideas and possible plans to hopefully come up with something new
and exciting and viable.
“In October
2010, 30 people came together at Radcliffe and committed themselves to work
toward…an open, distributed network of comprehensive online resources that
would draw on the nation’s living heritage from libraries, universities,
archives, and museums in order to educate, inform, and empower everyone in the
current and future generations.” This is
still DPLA’s guiding statement. It’s very ambitious and a little crazy,
but the DPLA really needs that scope.
Other guiding thoughts:
Inclusive
Bringing people together
Great principles
However, this effort is not totally unbounded. There are 5 central elements.
Code:
From the slide of a graphic artist’s representation of code matters:
- Use aggregations to build
- Metadata!
- Data tagging
- Interactive map of collections
- User-centered
- Shared Access
- Visual Discovery
- Curate
- Multi-Channeling
- Local to National Bridge
- No Walls!
- ExtraMUROS: How many ways can we make the most of Metadata?
- What is Open Link?
- University of MN, HathiTrust, CIC (Big 10 schools)
- Mass Digital Content
- Linked Open Data
- Mappings
- MINT
- Building context
- Enhance discovery using linked data
- Building navigable legislative history
- Interactive world
- As aggregation evolves, new tasks, new services
- Already used globally!
- Different way of representing data; simpler and more useful
- ShelfLife
- A real place
- Gather metadata; Provide visual editor to create crosswalks; Remediate metadata
- Are mappings published?
- Bookworm: How you find things: Search vs. browse
- What’s your motivation?
One of DPLA’s big pushes
will be to gather and create open source code that
other libraries can use so nobody’s reinventing the wheel.
Metadata
DPLA wants to provide open access to metadata gathered from all over and made available
on the “library cloud”. Cataloging records, circ records, etc.
Content
From the slide of a graphic artist’s representation of content matters:
·
Where’s
our Carnegie today?
·
Cater
to the standard user
·
Blueprint
for libraries
·
Keep
public funding
·
Content
& Scope
·
Who’s
our audience?
·
Explore
all mechanisms for aiding the DPLA in this initiative
·
Will
the DPLA HOLD content?
·
Collaborate
·
FREE
content for all
Find a way so everyone can find content.
We should be more coordinated in what we’re digitizing.
Collaborate
regardless on collection size - no competing.
No one, including the DPLA,
can go it alone.
DPLA is not
meant to put anybody out of business; meant to be a sharing center - open
access - open source.
Possibly keep a digital
copy in DPLA so everyone can download and access.
Tools & Services
DPLA would provide a series of tools and sources that everyone can use. For
instance, have an iPad app that everyone can use. Again, sharing instead
of reinventing the wheel.
Scannebago – a Winnebago
(or some other vehicle) with scanners to go out to the community and offer
scanning services. Especially the local, public domain items that just
aren’t a priority for most of the current scanning efforts. Coordinate efforts.
Community.
2 paid people
are working on the DPLA. The vision is supplementing them with a huge
number of volunteers. A community effort and buy-in.
There are active listervs.
Don’t envision an
institution with a big headquarters. Similar development to the Internet Engineering Task Force or
Wikimedia.
There would be a
group of people who come together once a year to improve the DPLA. Geek
gathering. Grassroots.
Shared resource
- both in the creation and the end product.
Where we are:
Beta Sprint: One
group was ready to start immediately. The idea of a digital library has been discussed
for a long time – long before the DPLA was even conceived of. Others said
there’s still a lot to discuss. DPLA elected to split the difference with
the Beta Sprint. Bring us your code! Put out a call for programs
and partial programs – with the understanding that the original developers
would be relinquishing their rights. DPLA got 39 unbelievable
submissions. Everything from code NARA,
the Smithsonian, and the GPO worked on together, to some smallish pieces.
There are 2 programmers working on it, and they’ll be rolling out a prototype
April 2013. It shows what might be done; it’s NOT the final product. There’s
lots of exciting technical development involved.
Lots of
meetings. There’s a series of plenary meetings, and “workstreams” meetings covering aspects of the DPLA. They
bring together all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds. Collaborative.
In person and virtual. Workstreams have open listservs, as well as open
meetings. Meeting notes, etc. are being posted online.
Trying
to show what an open and transparent organization would look like online.
Global
vision:
Recognize
necessity of global vision
Also recognize
that world library would be a disaster - watered down, discord, etc.
So the goal is not
standardized - not one big global library - but interoperative with other
national global libraries. A consumer could navigate through all these
national collections relatively seamlessly without having to gain direct access
to any of them.
Experimenting
with emigrating collections – moving collections from one format to another,
and one database to another. Currently working on a demonstration project,
which will be followed by other demo projects.
We’re behind in this. Europeana – the European
digital library, for instance.
Utopian?
Ambitious? Crazy? It kind of is. But we need to think big. We need
to have an alternative that’s in the public interest. Aim for something
positive that honors those ideals. Partner with the private, but create a
whole that’s bigger than the sum of its parts.
Part 3:
Luis Herrera
City Librarian
San Francisco
Public
We need to talk about and have the voice of public libraries, of all
types.
What are the
practical approaches and applications at the local level? How will it enhance
user experience? How do I get involved as staff member and individual?
It’s not just what can DPLA do for public libraries, but what can public
libraries do for DPLA.
Public libraries can become
content creators and content contributors. SFPL started
digitizing photos, neighborhood histories, periodicals, etc., and making it
available through the Internet Archives. They’re also working on city
records, but they’re not currently accessible. DPLA would be a possibility.
We should get members of the community engaged in creating content.
For example, Denver Public’s collections, including Western heritage.
It’s important
to spread the word about the potential of DPLA, and to address the confusion about
it to make it inclusive. Help public libraries figure out how to produce a digital
strategy. How do they do that? How to strategize? Prioritize? Get
involved?
Part 4:
Amy Ryan
President
Boston Public Library
Public Libraries are essential to DPLA successfully achieving its missions. Free
to all. Commitment to information access is essential to our success.
DPLA is essential to that.
PBL houses its
own state-of-the-art digital lab, as well as the Internet Archive’s. BPL has digitized
thousands of items - photos, advertising, maps. They house John Adams’ library.
Before digitization, they had about
10-12 visits a year for them. Since
digitization, that collection has had 1 million hits. BPL is also funded
by state as the Library for the Commonwealth. Therefore they digitize
items from historical societies and libraries from throughout MA. BPL goes to
them, helps assess collections, brings them back to BPL, and digitizes them. For
instance, they have deeds for land that goes back to the Pilgrims. This assures
access.
Part 5:
Q&A
Q: Do
you host open library programs to let community know about digitization?
A:
Amy Ryan (BPL): We reach out to the Massachusetts Library conference.
Luis Herrera
(SFPL): It’s part of our strategy. We have small grants that community
members can get to digitize materials, neighborhood histories, for instance. We
make sure our community outreach talks about digitization.
Susan Hildreth
(IMLS): DPLA’s primary audience right now is organizations (libraries, historical
societies, etc.) for digitization.
John Palfrey (Harvard Law):
DPLA’s strategy to go to groups and build up cool
content, and then go to individuals and the general public and get them excited
and then involved. The Audience Participation Workstream is talking about this.
Q: How
is DPLA related to or different from HathiTrust?
A: No reinventing the
wheel - be complementary. Basic tenet of DPLA. Hathitrust and the Internet
Archive are important colleagues. We’ve met with them to try to carve out
a way to help instead of compete. HathiTrust is academically oriented - DPLA is
more public library oriented. Mainly we want to collaborate to make things more
accessible.
We envision that
most people won’t go through DPLA website. Go through public library
websites and access resources. Public
Libraries will be able to get code from DPLA that they can take and configure
as they please. DPLA might very well be invisible - that’s great!
The Governance Workstream
is working on what kind of organization will DPLA be? Details and brass tacks. Open
governance processes.
More
collaborative, less competitive.
Q: What about patron
privacy?
A:
Susan Hildreth
(IMLS): Very strongly held value at DPLA. Development work is going
forward, but we don’t have a definite answer.
John Palfrey (Harvard Law): However
the Legal Workstream is heavily discussing “reader
privacy.” Also being discussed in
the Technical Aspects Workstream. Should a patron have the ability to
access the DPLA directly, or should everyone sign in through their local
library? Should anyone have to sign in at all? Don’t want a National ID
card situation. Don’t want to withhold functionality.
Q: Are you limiting
content to public domain? Are you developing the technology to protect
copyrighted material?
A:
Amy Ryan (BPL): BPL has a contract with Boston School
of the Blind to digitize copyrighted items for the blind. The blind have a different relationship with
copyright because of access issues. Try to maintain the spirit of
copyright but make content available.
John Palfrey (Harvard Law): It’s
easy to say work with the public domain now and do the
hard stuff later. Looking at where law allows access is crucial. Nudging
around boundaries of what the law allows. Possibly bring issues to the
attention of the public. For instance orphan works
Questions DPLA’s
asking:
Does is make
sense for DPLA to try to make copyrighted material available?
Should the DPLA
be in the business of asking for copyright reform? Orphan works
legislation?
DPLA’s also having a conversation about digitizing newspapers. At issue are
both copyright (newspapers have a large orphan works zone) and the scale of
newspapers. Digitizing a run takes lots of resources. Where should
the emphasis be in scanning and digitization? I would love to see the
community say what they want digitized and have the DPLA facilitate that.
Grassroots collection development.
Q: What about ContentDM?
John Palfrey (Harvard Law):
That’s database software for digitized materials. We
want to make any software we use interoperable. Is DPLA going to be a
repository of content? If so, how to we stay collaborative instead of
competitive? Or will DPLA just provide access to the content? Who will be
responsible for making that content evergreen (work with new formats and technologies)?
DPLA as repository of last resort? If someone wants digitized content but
can’t host it. Interoperability over time as data formats change? Keep a
copy squirreled away somewhere in a basic format so it could be made compatible
with a later format over time? Hub and a Network? He doesn’t think that it’ll
be a be-all and end-all repository.
Q: What about the Google digitization project?
A: We want to reach
out to Google and Amazon and others. Various organizations who are partners
with DPLA are working with Google Books and DPLA hopes to get some of that
content into DPLA eventually.
Q: How do you foresee
small archives held by community groups participating in DPLA?
A: Grassroots digitization
is very important. Local history is crucial. Maybe DPLA will act as
a conduit of access. Maybe offer the possibility of digitization and
codigital collection building.
John Palfrey (Harvard Law): Funding for the DPLA. Hopes to see minimum funding to
core DPLA and as much as possible to partner organizations to do these kinds of
projects. Grassroots digitization. Grassroots innovation.
DPLA = Enabler?
IMLS can bring
in best practices and models to DPLA for digitization. DPLA can help libraries
figure out digital strategy.
Melissa @ Central
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