Don't fear the reaper: metadata harvesting, lessons learned, and looking ahead with Calisphere
Since 2014, the California Digital Library (CDL) has been piloting the use of a metadata harvesting infrastructure to aggregate unique collections from across the 10-campus University of California library system -- and libraries, archives, and museums throughout the state. These collections are now available through the newly redesigned Calisphere (http://calisphere.cdlib.org/) website in addition to the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). Our relatively new metadata harvesting infrastructure, which adapts DPLA's early code base, has made it easier for contributors to share collections. We're now able to aggregate a much larger range of resources than before: 400,000 objects are now available in Calisphere -- an immediate 70% increase in content from the previous site. However, there are challenges to scaling and streamlining our processes, from the point of staging collections for harvest, through to quality control checking results. This talk will highlight where we've been with metadata aggregation, and where we're planning to go. We'll discuss points of pain and lessons learned with the existing infrastructure. We'll report on an environmental scan we conducted to evaluate DPLA's Heiðrún stack, along with approaches developed by DigitalNZ and other large-scale aggregators. Last, we will discuss new requirements that we've developed, and directions that we are planning to take to improve on and ramp up our processes.
Creating shareable metadata in New York State and Beyond: The ESDN Metadata Working Group
Empire State Digital Network (ESDN), the New York state service hub for DPLA, is administered by the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) in partnership with eight other regional library councils collectively working as the Empire State Library Network. Together, these partners work to contribute digital resources from hundreds of New York institutions to DPLA. In order to improve discoverability of these resources in DPLA and other aggregated platforms, ESDN has convened a group of metadata professionals from throughout New York State. The aim of the group is to 1.) create documentation and best practices to help our partners create richer, more shareable metadata and 2.) host community events focusing on metadata cleanup and enrichment, and to document those events so that they can be easily replicated around New York State and the wider community. In this lightning talk, we will plan to provide an overview of group, our goals and objectives as well as the work we’ve completed so far and are planning for the rest of 2016.
Service Hub Strategies: Enabling collection building through consultation
The Recollection Wisconsin Service Hub is one of the newest hubs to join the DPLA network. One of our primary goals as a service hub is to grow the collections and diversity of contributing institutions from Wisconsin, and to do that on a relative shoestring. To that end, we have established a service approach that emphasizes training and consulting over digitization services. This lightning session will outline the consultation model in development by University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries, in partnership with Marquette University Library, and provide specific examples based on two pilot projects with a local historical society and medical college. We hope to expand the model to better position Wisconsin cultural heritage institutions, regardless of size or infrastructure, to make the riches of their collections accessible to a broad audience through DPLA.