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 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 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 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.

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

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/

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/