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What is the Digital Commonwealth?
The Digital Commonwealth is a gateway (a web portal) to digital assets hosted by Massachusetts cultural institutions. Cultural institutions include libraries, museums, historical societies, archives, research institutions, and other repositories of our cultural heritage. The website, www.digitalcommonwealth.org, features the latest information about the project, including a prototype of the portal, list of founding members, planning documentation, and information resources about digitization issues.
The planning stage of this project is funded by an LSTA Grant to the Boston Public Library. The grant is administered by the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners.
Who can join the Digital Commonwealth?
Cultural institutions who already have digitized collections or who have collections they wish to digitize are welcome to join the Digital Commonwealth, as are group sponsoring organizations such as regions, networks, institutions that work with their members to provide training and support (e.g., NMRLS, NELINET, Consortia, C/W MARS).
Why should you join the Digital Commonwealth?
Membership in the Digital Commonwealth would be beneficial to your researchers and patrons as well as your institution. Benefits for patrons include a search tool that will allow researchers to search across the collections of many Massachusetts cultural organizations with a single query. This search tool allows researchers to focus on their search (researchers won’t need to be aware of individual institutions or even the Digital Commonwealth portal to find objects from members’ collections) and helps researchers discover institutions and/or collections that were previously unknown to them.
Benefits for your institution include: the ability to reach a wider audience than you might through an individual Web presence; the opportunity to obtain consistent, reliable, and standardized information on best practices and standards for digitizing; an increased potential for cooperation and collaboration among institutions; an enhanced awareness of digital collections held by other institutions which might complement your own; and the possibility for “value-added” features – online exhibits, lesson plans, etc., using collection items from a variety of institutions without the need for borrowing, moving, or handling original items.
How can my institution participate in the Digital Commonwealth?
There are several ways to participate.
Harvested Site
Institutions with existing digital collections and associated metadata that are compatible with the Digital Commonwealth's standards may be integrated into the search portal so that search results will include their digital assets. We will work with your institution to arrange for access to your metadata and digital collection. This level of participation requires that an institution join the Digital Commonwealth as a Small Institutional Member or as a General Member. See fee schedule below.
Shared Repository Members
Institutions may participate through shared repositories which are compatible with Digital Commonwealth standards (such as NMRLS, C/W MARS, NELINET). We are working with other organizations to encourage formation of such repositories. An institution that chooses to participate in the Digital Commonwealth via a shared repository will need to make technical, financial, and governance arrangements directly with the host of the shared repository. This type of participation requires that the shared repository join the Digital Commonwealth as a Sponsoring Member. See fee schedule below.
Linked Members
Cultural institutions which host digital materials on the Web that are not compatible with the Digital Commonwealth's standards may still be listed as online resources. A description of your digital collection and a link will be posted on the Digital Commonwealth portal. This level of participation requires that an institution join the Digital Commonwealth as a Small Institutional Member or as a General Member. See fee schedule below.
What does it cost to join the Digital Commonwealth?
Membership and first year fees:
• $50.00 Small Institutional Member (with two or fewer paid staff)
• $100.00 General Member (larger institutions)
• $500.00 Sponsoring Member (organizations that plan to work with their own membership to join the DC, e.g. NELINET, CMRLS)
Fees for future years will be higher when start-up grant funding is exhausted. Participants will also incur digitization, hosting, and administration costs, which are not covered by the annual membership fee.
Will there be training for those of us without digital collection experience?
Yes, an orientation and training program is in development. We will offer on-site orientation to groups, and we are currently working on documentation and training. Several of our group sponsoring members offer training to their own membership.
What should my institution do if it wants to create digital collections?
It is important for any institution to articulate how digitization fits into its institutional goals prior to starting a digitization project. The following steps are suggested:
1. Write a selection policy
2. Select a suitable collection to digitize
3. Consider whether you'll outsource the digitization or manage it in-house
4. Set standards and best practices for handling and digitizing materials to prevent damage to originals
5. Decide whether to host the site in-house or outsource (one option would be to join a repository)
6. Write a long-term sustainability policy that answers the following:
Who will oversee the collection?
Who will fund it?
Who will work on it in the future?
How will you handle hardware and software obsolescence issues?
Reminder: Digitization is an access tool, not a preservation strategy.
What is the difference between a repository and a portal?
A repository stores and maintains digital components (including both metadata and digital objects) according to a framework of policies and standards. By means of its technological infrastructure, the repository provides access (user interfaces and displays) to the digital content.
A portal contains only the metadata that enables the discovery of the digital materials; it does not contain the actual digital objects. For example, when a user searches and browses within the portal, the search results will provide the user with links to external websites (sites outside the portal) that display the digital objects (some of the links might point to digital content stored in repositories). The portal is roughly comparable to an Internet search engine, which displays information about web pages and provides links to them, but does not display the pages themselves.
After my institution joins the Digital Commonwealth, how do we become part of the portal?
These are the basic steps (more detailed documenation is being finalized):
- An institution reviews its existing digital collections and associated metadata
- The institution reviews the Digital Commonwealth's requirements for harvestable metadata
- The Digital Commonwealth will provide guidance and will have some staffing available to help resolve issues relating to converting existing metadata into OAI-compliant metadata
- The institution informs the Digital Commonwealth when its metadata is ready
- The Digital Commonwealth harvests the metadata and integrates it into its search index. The result is that researchers can search many digital collections (including your institution’s digital collection) with one query from one interface.
How can I stay informed about, and participate in, the development of the Digital Commonwealth?
The Digital Commonwealth website (www.digitalcommonwealth.org) contains the latest information about the project. Also, there is a discussion list about the Digital Commonwealth. Instructions about how to subscribe are available at:
http://www.nmrls.org/digitalcommonwealth/discussion.htm
How will the project be governed?
The governance guidelines and a list of members of the Executive Committee are available at:
http://www.nmrls.org/digitalcommonwealth/governance/list.htm
Please contact the Digital Commonwealth President if you are interested in participating on the Executive or other committees. Vivien Goldman < viviengoldman@comcast.net>
What standards will the Digital Commonwealth use to assemble the information in the search index?
The Digital Commonwealth will use OAI (Open Archives Initiative--a protocol for metadata harvesting) and Dublin Core. Dublin Core is an international metadata standard that has been used as a means of description for countless digital collections worldwide. Simple or standard Dublin Core consists of a set of 15 optional and repeatable elements. The elements are used to provide information about an object, such as its title, creator, date, subject, etc. For Digital Commonwealth, Dublin Core (encoded in XML) will be harvested via the OAI protocol and incorporated into the search index.
What is OAI?
The Open Archives Initiative is a protocol for metadata harvesting. Within this protocol Data Providers (institutions) make available (or expose) their metadata about existing digital collections, and a Service Provider harvests the metadata using an automated application. Then, the Service Provider offers access to the harvested metadata through a web-based search engine.
Under the OAI model, Data Providers supply *only* the metadata for their collections: the digital resources themselves remain in the owning institution's repository. The metadata records describe the digital objects and provide information that allows a user to locate and view the desired resource.
As my organization attempts to make its metadata harvestable, how will the Digital Commonwealth provide assistance?
During the grant-funded start-up period of the project, the Digital Commonwealth had some staffing available to help resolve issues relating to converting existing metadata into OAI-compliant metadata. We are planning to review how the implementation of existing crosswalks (tools that convert one format of metadata into another, for example MARC to Dublin Core) could facilitate the gathering of existing metadata from disparate collections for the Digital Commonwealth portal.
Where can I learn more about the standards that will be used by the Digital Commonwealth project?
As of early 2007, full documentation about standards for the Digital Commonwealth project is in development. Once it is available, a link will be added here to detailed information about the Digital Commonwealth's technical requirements for metadata and implementation of the OAI protocol.
A technical white paper drafted during an earlier phase of planning for the Digital Commonwealth is available at: http://www.nmrls.org/digitalcommonwealth/MODeLTechPaper.pdf
What digitization specifications does Digital Commonwealth recommend?
The Digital Commonwealth is developing recommended digitization specifications that will allow institutions to take advantage of the full functionality of the search portal.
A suggested web resource to consult is, "C/WMARS Digital Imaging Standards & Best Practices," available at:
http://dlib.cwmars.org/cdm4/images/cwmars_benchmarking.pdf
2007-08-27