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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
What is the
Digital Commonwealth?
The Digital
Commonwealth will be 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.
What will the
Digital Commonwealth look like?
It will look
like a Web site or portal that allows researchers to search for
digital assets held by cultural institutions across the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts. The Web site will be accessible to persons with
disabilities.
See the
prototype at:
http://necol.nelinet.net/digcommonwealth/
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?
A
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 to 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.
1. Harvested Site Members -- Institutions that have existing digital collections with
associated metadata that are compatible with the Digital
Commonwealth's standards may be integrated into the search portal so
that searches 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 Cultural
Institution” or as an “Other Cultural Institution.” See fee schedule
below.)
2. 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. (This type of
participation requires that the shared repository join the Digital
Commonwealth as a “Group Sponsoring Organizaton.”)
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. The
Digital Commonwealth does not plan to provide these services.
3. 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 Cultural
Institution” or as an “Other Cultural Institution.” See fee schedule
below.)
What does it
cost to join the Digital Commonwealth?
Membership and first year fees:
•
$50.00 Small Cultural Institutions (with two or fewer paid
staff)
•
$100.00 Other Cultural Institutions (larger institutions)
•
$500.00 Group Sponsoring Organizations (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 planning a major training event
for fall 2007. 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
presentations; it does not contain the actual digital objects. For
example, when a user searches and browses within a 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?
The portal is
currently under development; the precise procedure has not been
finalized, but these are the probable steps:
-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.
-The result is
that researchers can search many digital collections (including your
institution's digital collection) with 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. Carolyn Noah <cnoah@cmrls.org>
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, all of
which are optional and repeatable. 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 at the owning institution. The metadata
records
describe the digital objects and provide information
that allows a user to locate and view the desired resource. After gathering the
metadata from
participating institutions, the Service Provider offers access to
the digital objects through a web-based search engine.
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 will have 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
4/27/07 |