Press: Trip Report of DPLA Audience & Participation Workstream

“On December 6, 2012, the Audience and Participation workstream met at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. About two dozen colleagues participated in person and remotely via Google+ Hangout to talk about processes and strategies for getting content into the DPLA (the content hubs and service hubs strategy), brainstormed on the types of users and the types of uses for the DPLA, and outlined marketing and branding messages that aligned with the goals and technology of the DPLA while getting content contributors and application developers excited about what the DPLA represents. I’m happy to have been invited to take part in the meeting, am grateful to DPLA for funding my travel to attend in person, and came away excited and energized about the DPLA plans — if also with a few commitments to help move the project along.

“Emily Gore, DPLA’s Director of Content, started the first topic by describing the mechanisms being set up to feed metadata to the DPLA database. The first version of DPLA will be an aggregation of metadata about objects various services and cultural heritage organizations around the country. The DPLA will leverage and promoting metadata coming through hubs, where a hub can be an existing large gathering of stuff (“content hubs” — think Harvard University, Smithsonian Institution, National Archives and Records Administration) or a hub can be a meeting point for state or regional content (“service hubs”). From the perspective of the Audience and Participation workstream, the service hubs are probably the most interesting because that will be how information about an institution’s content gets into the DPLA.

“Just about every state in the country is covered by a state or regional digital library program, so the infrastructure is already out there to help organizations. The DPLA itself is aiming to be a small organization of about five to ten people, and at that scale it would be impossible to have a one-on-one relationship between the DPLA and all the possible organizations in the country. So the DPLA Service Hubs will offer a number of services in a region: aggregation of metadata from local repositories, help with new digitization and creation of associated metadata, and engaging participants in the region around different uses of the content in the DPLA. By the April 2013 launch of the DPLA site, the goal is to have seven service hubs operating and a similar number of content hubs. Some of the state and regional collaboratives have already reached out to the DPLA to join, and DPLA is working on updating a list of collaboratives that was created a few years ago. One path of outreach is through the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies (COSLA) group. Talking to state library agencies makes sense because there are indications that IMLS — who grants money to state library agencies — is aligning its LSTA funding with the goals of participating in DPLA. State humanities councils and ALA can also be venues for getting the word out. The ALA Washington Office can be especially useful for getting word to legislators about the importants and value of collaboration with the DPLA.”

Read Peter Murray’s full report on Disruptive Library Technology Jester, Trip Report of DPLA Audience & Participation Workstream