Elizabeth Hacala resigns from Digital Commonwealth

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Elizabeth Hacala, who has been providing administrative and financial management services to Digital Commonwealth for the past three years, is resigning due to family responsibilities. Elizabeth first became involved with Digital Commonwealth through her work with the MLA, which served as Digital Commonwealth’s fiscal agent until last year, and then through her own firm, Fitchdale Management.

Elizabeth’s service has extended far and beyond the handful of hours for which she was officially paid. She graciously tended to many membership issues as well as regularly attended monthly board meetings. In that venue especially, her background in software development and technology has been an invaluable added asset, particularly during this past year of transitions to new repository platforms.

Digital Commonwealth owes Elizabeth considerable appreciation as yet another key person who has been instrumental in the organization’s survival and success. Fortunately, though, Elizabeth is not leaving Digital Commonwealth entirely. She will continue to help manage the annual conference, and undoubtedly continue to contribute in other ways as well.

Elizabeth sends this personal message to the membership:

“After over three years working with the Digital Commonwealth I will be leaving my work running day to day operations. It has been wonderful to meet you all by phone, at trainings, and at conference.  I hate to say I am leaving to spend more time with my family, because that is such a cliche, yet that is exactly what I am doing.  It was difficult to give up working on a regular basis with such a great and dedicated board.

I will continue to work on some special projects like the Digital Commonwealth Annual Conference and look forward to seeing you all there in the spring.”

Please no longer email Elizabeth directly but send all future membership inquiries to membership@digitalcomonwealth.org.

Repository development at the BPL: September update

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Over the last month or so, the development of the new Digital Commonwealth repository currently ongoing at BPL has focused on refining the batch upload process. The repository developers have been working closely with the BPL Digital Services metadata team to create a standardized spreadsheet format for ingest that will offer institutions the ability to provide rich metadata about their digital objects, while also being flexible, intuitive, and simple to use. This work has brought the goal of allowing institutions to do self-mediated batch uploads much closer, though there are still several issues to tackle before this functionality is ready to roll out.

Meanwhile, the beta testing phase of both the “Search” and “Admin” applications is ongoing and has received quite a bit of helpful feedback from a number of institutions/individuals that have taken the system for a test-drive.

The URLs are:
Search (public discovery): http://search.digitalcommonwealth.org/
Admin (ingest & management): http://admin.digitalcommonwealth.org/

In late September, development of the workflow for ingesting material into the repository via OAI-PMH will begin in order to aggregate records from the numerous institutions around the state that provide access to digital objects through their own repository systems. The BPL will be reaching out to institutions that currently contribute material to Digital Commonwealth via OAI-PMH feed to learn a more about existing data structures, preferred metadata formats for harvesting, back-end systems being used, and other details that will help this phase of the project move forward more smoothly.

Lastly, the BPL has set up a public Google Group email list for institutions and users to provide feedback or report issues with the new repository system. Anyone may read content posted to the group; membership is required to send messages to the list. See https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/digitalcommonwealth for details.

 

August 2013 Newsletter

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All the latest news from the Digital Commonwealth of Massachusetts!

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Updates for August, 2013

New Officers to serve on the Digital Commonwealth Board of Directors

The acceptance by the DC Board of Ellen Dubinsky (Bridgewater) to serve as Secretary for the current fiscal year, now rounds out the officer positions for the Board of Directors. Karen Cariani (WGBH) has stepped up to fill the President’s position while Anne Sauer (Tufts) will serve as Vice-President. Ryan Hanson (Newton) will continue another year as Treasurer. Joseph Fisher (UMass Lowell) now serves as Past-President.

Be on the lookout soon for an email voting process to begin, since it requires majority approval by the membership to ratify the new office appointments.

Information about and links to the new Digital Commonwealth Fedora Repository

The BPL has now moved into the “beta launch” phase of the the Hydra-based Digital Commonwealth repository platform. Information about the functionality available and links to the front and back end are explained in this recent blog post:  http://digitalcommonwealth.org/blog/?p=117

Amy Benson hired to advise members on Metadata procedures

For the remainder of this calendar year, Amy Benson will be providing metadata production support and quality control assistance for collections digitized under the BPL/Digital Commonwealth LSTA-funded statewide digitization program.

LSTA funding has also enabled the hiring the Amy.

Many members should recognize Amy through the numerous digital-production workshops she has given in the area, often in association with the NEDCC. Amy also served on the original Executive Committee of Digital Commonwealth. She currently works as the Librarian/Archivist for Digital Projects at Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library.

For more information and instructions on how to request assistance from Amy, please read this Digital Commonwealth blog post: http://digitalcommonwealth.org/blog/?p=104

Vote for new officers and By-law changes

With the new fiscal year and the change in the Digital Commonwealth board of directors membership also comes a change in officer positions. Now that Joseph Fisher (UMass Lowell) has completed his year of service as president of the board, Karen Cariani (WGBH) has moved up from serving as vice-president to president for the next 12 months. Anne Sauer (Tufts) has accepted to serve as the new vice-president. Since Anne has been serving as secretary this past year, that position is now vacant.

At the next board meeting in late July, open officer and committee positions will be filled. The slate of officers will require ratification by the membership. In addition, further adjustments to the By-laws are being prepared that will also require ratification. Be on the lookout for an email coming later this summer announcing the voting procedure.

C/W MARS members meet to learn about Digital Commonwealth

The C/W MARS network arranged for a members  meeting at the Palmer Public Library on June 27th to discuss the future of digitizing and the Digital Treasures service.  Danny Pucci, Lead Digital Projects Librarian at the Boston Public Library, presented a power point presentation on the Digital Commonwealth and current partnership with the BPL that has provided LSTA-funded scanning services to members within the past two years.

There were many questions about the future plans for digitization at the state-wide level and clarification was sought on the role of Digital Commonwealth. Margaret Morrissey, public library director in Southbridge and Digital Commonwealth board member, spoke about the evolving partnership between the BPL and Digital Commonwealth.

The general consensus from the meeting was that C/W MARS would let the status quo prevail for now and take a vote on the continuation of the service at a future date.

Lesson Plan Workshop

On Monday, June 24, 2013, Digital Commonwealth of Massachusetts held a free half-day workshop focusing on developing lesson plans featuring digital content. Kim Cochrane, Curriculum Librarian, Framingham State University, and Nancy Heywood, Digital Projects Coordinator, Massachusetts Historical Society, led the workshop. For more information please view this Digital Commonwealth blog post: http://digitalcommonwwealth/blog/?p=108

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