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!!

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:

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.

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

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: