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.

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

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

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.

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.

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