All the latest news from the Digital Commonwealth of Massachusetts!

Updates for March, 2014

2014 Annual Conference: April 8, at Holy Cross

“Practically Digital: Doing What it Takes”

The 8th Annual Digital Commonwealth Conference

Hogan Center

College of the Holy Cross, Worcester

Join us at the Hogan Center at Holy Cross in Worcester for another great annual conference. This year’s theme is: “Practically Digital: Doing What it Takes”.

Featuring Keynotes by Melissa Levine and Liz Bishoff

Doors open at 8:00am and sessions run from 9:00am – 4:00pm.

Registration and complete information available here:

http://members.digitalcommonwealth.org/2014DCAC

Repository Migration: completion set for April 8!

That is correct, the migration of our repositories in DSpace and Omeka is scheduled for completion the day of the Annual Conference! The folks at the BPL are actively working on completing the final OAI feeds from our Omeka site (http://digitalcommonwealth.org/collection-tree). The final objects from DSpace (http://repository.digitalcommonwealth.org) are being moved. And the DC news blog has already been copied over to a new server space at the BPL (http://blog.digitalcommonwealth.org/). Finally, we have been busy copying and updating information pages from Omeka to the Wild Apricot membership site (http://members.digitalcommonwealth.org/).

All of this work is slated for completion by April 8! In time for an official public release at the Conference! After that, we will terminate the DSpace and Omeka sites and the digitalcommonwealth.org URL will point to the new Hydra repository at the BPL, currently accessed @ https://search.digitalcommonwealth.org/

This may sound like a confusing mish mash of overlapping websites and digital repositories — but not for very much longer!! After April 8 we will have one repository site, one member informational site, and one news blog site — three separate URLs for three very distinctive purposes. Hooray!! Hooray!!

DPLA: Gates Foundation Grant

Digital Commonwealth will be hosting 3 upcoming workshops to prepare public libraries to contribute content to the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) as part of a Gates Foundation Grant recently awarded to the DPLA.

In these workshops, public librarians will learn how to work with Digital Commonwealth to select content for digitization and/or identify existing digital content, digitize new content and provide metadata and contextualization for that content, and determine potential themes for DPLA

Exhibitions (http://dp.la/exhibitions), such as this exhibit concerning the Bread & Roses Strike in Lawrence:

The workshop dates have been scheduled:

Wednesday, April 16, 9:30am – 4:30pm at Boston Public Library (Application deadline is April 9, 2014, 5pm)
Wednesday, June 18, 9:30am – 4:30pm at Jones Public Library, Amherst, MA
Wednesday, July 16, 9:30am – 4:30pm at SAILS Inc., Lakeville, MA

The ideal candidates for these workshops will be public librarians who deal with local history, genealogy and similar unique content. If interested, registration is now available.

Board Members and Volunteers!!

A call will go out at the Annual Conference for volunteers to join the Board of Directors and help with projects. Two board members are resigning due to new jobs they have received. Our current Vice President, Anne Sauer, is leaving Tufts for a position at Cornell. And our current Treasurer, Ryan Hanson, is leaving the Newton Public Library for a job at a private company in Boston. Joe Fisher will fill in for Ryan as Treasurer, but the board has yet to determine a VP replacement.

These are exciting times for Digital Commonwealth, and if you have an interest in serving as a volunteer or would like to recommend someone else, please send an email to digitalcommonwealth@gmail.com.

!! Check out our recent Blog Posts !!

The Public Library of Brookline’s Digitization Experience

Anne Reed, the Assistant Director for Administration at the Brookline Public Library offers this blog post about the library’s experience preparing and submitting materials to the BPL for digitization: http://blog.digitalcommonwealth.org/?p=216

Digital Commonwealth Movers & Shakers 2014

Congratulations goes out to Tom Blake and Kristi Chadwick, current and former board members, for their inclusion in this year’s Library Journal list of “Movers & Shakers” for 2014:
http://blog.digitalcommonwealth.org/?p=233

Metadata Creation is a GAAS!

Timely tips and sage advice about metadata creation from Amy Benson, archivist at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and a recent consultant for the Digital Commonwealth. Read all about it in her guest blog post:

http://blog.digitalcommonwealth.org/?p=240

School Librarians and Digital Commonwealth at MSLA

Digital Commonwealth board members conducted a presentation to teachers at the recent MSLA conference about using DC lesson plans and incorporating DC and DPLA images in the classroom: http://blog.digitalcommonwealth.org/?p=242

Sincerely, Digital Commonwealth

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All the latest news from the Digital Commonwealth of Massachusetts!

Updates for January, 2014

Save the Date!! April 8, 2014

8^th Annual Digital Commonwealth Conference

Hogan Center at Holy Cross in Worcester

This one-day conference features keynote addresses from two nationally known speakers: Melissa Levine and Liz Bishoff

Melissa Levine is the Lead Copyright Officer from the University of Michigan Library. She will speak about current copyright issues.

Liz Bishoff, of the Bishoff Group, was previously the Executive Director of the Colorado Digitization Project. She will discuss statewide and regional digital collaborations and the need for sustainability planning.

Planned breakout session topics include audience engagement and crowdsourcing, conservation and digitization, online exhibits and lightning round presentations from Digital Commonwealth members. More details regarding sessions and pricing will be available in early February.

Repository update

The BPL has been busy working on adding OAI-PMH harvesting feeds from member sites to the new repository. In this latest blog post, read about the work being done and the anticipated completion dates: http://digitalcommonwealth.org/blog/?p=211.

DPLA Plans Training Sessions

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is working with four content hubs, including Digital Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and planning a series of training sessions for public librarians. The goal is to help public librarians modernize their skills in a digital age, and in turn, communicate their work and their locales to the world.

Digital Commonwealth and its partner organization, the Boston Public Library, will be announcing more details soon about the three upcoming training sessions. Digital Commonwealth is delighted that Anna Fahey-Flynn, BPL’s Collaborative Library Services Manager, is helping to implement this exciting training program.

Member Projects: Blog Post Series

Two recent blog posts add to our series about member digitization projects. Both of these happen to focus on the challenges of creating metadata:

Lee Library Association’s Digitization Project

In a followup with Library Trustee Mary Philpott, she discusses her experiences using the admin interface of the new repository at the BPL to create metadata for Lee Library’s digital objects: http://digitalcommonwealth.org/blog/?p=199

The Accidental Metadatalyst

Cara Marcus, Director of Library Services at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital, also examines metadata creation in this blog post, only in this instance using the Excel spreadsheet template provided by the BPL: http://digitalcommonwealth.org/blog/?p=209

If you would like to highlight your institution and add your experiences to this ongoing series, please send details in an email to digitalcommonwealth@gmail.com

DPLA offices located at the Boston Public Library

In a recent blog post, Dan Cohen, Executive Director of the DPLA, describes the physical office space of the Digital Public Library of America within the Boston Public Library. Digital Commonwealth is glad to hear that its partner organization, the BPL, has been so welcoming to the DPLA!

http://dp.la/info/2014/01/08/location-location-location/

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Regular topical entries featuring highlights from member collections!!

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All the latest news from the Digital Commonwealth of Massachusetts!

Updates for October/November, 2013

New Officers and Bylaws Ratified

The votes are in! The new Board of Directors members are official and the Bylaw changes ratified. With that step out of the way, Digital Commonwealth can now officially apply for non-profit status.

A list of current board members is available on the DC Omeka web site: http://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/board

The vote completion also means that, in accordance with the new bylaw changes, Ex-officio members on the board have the right to vote on board decisions. Besides the BPL, currently represented by Tom Blake, this change also effects representation by the Mass Board of Library Commissioners (represented by Gregor Trinkaus-Randall), Mass School Library Association (represented by Kim Cochrane), and the Mass Library System (represented by Greg Pronevitz).

Digital Commonwealth owes a great deal of gratitude to each of these members and the institutions they represent for all of the work, support, and advice they have provided for many years. It is certainly fitting and long overdue that they be allowed the privilege of full participation with their vote on future board decisions.

An updated posting of the revised bylaws is available @ http://digitalcommonwealth.org/bylaws
and in PDF download @ http://digitalcommonwealth.org/docs/DCofMA-Bylaws-Revision-FINAL-2013-8-1.pdf

Digital Commonwealth changes its mailing address

Digital Commonwealth has finally established a permanent mailing address. We Promise!! Please direct all future correspondence to the following:
Digital Commonwealth, Inc.
321 Walnut Street
Newton, MA 02460

The BPL Receives Award for Digitization Work

The Boston Public Library received the Commonwealth Award for its digitization work for Digital Commonwealth members at last month’s Griffin Museum of Photography’s eighth annual Focus Awards ceremony. For a complete report view this blog post: http://digitalcommonwealth.org/blog/?p=172

The BPL Expands its Collections in the new Digital Commonwealth Repository

The new Digital Commonwealth repository under development at the Boston Public Library is continuously expanding its collection holdings. Two recent additions are large photographic collections: Arthur Griffith Photographs from the Griffith Museum of Photography and the Lesslie Jones Collection from the BPL.

Besides over 36,000 Leslie Jones photographs documenting the history of the greater Boston area from the 1920s to 1950s, the BPL has been busy adding other parts of its extensive collections to the new Digital Commonwealth repository that have not previously been included, such as a collection of 64 Circus Posters, 351 vintage Travel Posters from the 1920s-1940s, 180 sports photographs from the Michael T. “Nuf Ced” McGreevey Collection, and 101 Robert McClosky sketches from Make Way for Ducklings.

These are just a few examples of the growing abundance of state-wide collections represented in the new Digital Commonwealth repository that the BPL is hosting and continuously developing and improving. Check out the full list of collections now represented: https://search.digitalcommonwealth.org/collections.

By early next year we expect that all of Digital Commonwealth will be included in the new repository at the BPL, and the current Omeka and DSpace sites will at that time be discontinued.

DPLAfest at BPL

Last month Northeastern, Simmons, and the BPL hosted the first annual DPLAfest at the BPL in honor of the successful launch in April 2013 of the new Digital Public Library of America website. For a personal account of the event, please view this blog post by guest reporter Molly Stothert-Maurer: http://digitalcommonwealth.org/blog/?p=167

DPLA Launches the DPLA Bookshelf

At its DPLAfest in Boston, the Digital Public Library of America introduced the DPLA Bookshelf, a browsable collection of a million online books. For a full report, view this DPLA blog post: http://dp.la/info/2013/10/24/bookshelf-announcement/

DPLA Announces Million-Dollar Grant

The Digital Public Library of America announced that it has received $990,195 grant the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to train public librarians in Digital Technologies. For a full report, view this DPLA blog post: http://dp.la/info/2013/10/24/gates-announcement/

Sincerely, Digital Commonwealth

	Copyright © 2013 Digital Commonwealth. All rights reserved. Contact email: digitalcommonwealth@gmail.com