Page 171 - Building Digital Libraries

CHAPTER 7

And we share metadata . . . but only within our community. The library
metadata community has historically been wary of openly sharing bib-
liographic metadata, in part to prevent a third party from capitalizing on
and commercializing the profession’s investments. So, while libraries have
worked hard to develop protocols to enable the sharing of metadata and
information within their own community, traditional library bibliographic
systems have actively prevented this information from being shared outside
of the community . . . and libraries’ users have been worse off because of this.
By preventing the open sharing of library data, the community has stunted
the growth of new research and innovation, and has inadvertently become a
barrier to researchers who are interested in digital humanities research, data
mining, or image and document analysis. Consider the following questions,
and try to honestly answer how easy it would be for your own institution to:
1. Provide all of your bibliographic metadata to a
researcher for publication
2. Provide access to your local control vocabularies and
how these vocabularies map to other content in use
3. Provide an automated method to evaluate copyright for
digital content
4. Provide full text of one’s repository or collection for the
purposes of data mining
The reality is that most digital library providers couldn’t easily answer many
of these requests, and in many cases, the barrier would not be a technical
one. Just as libraries have had to navigate the many technology challenges
that have occurred within this new information ecosystem, so too have
they had to address the changing user expectations related to the rise of
digital humanities researchers. As humanities researchers have embraced
computational research, libraries have been forced to confront the technical
and policy barriers that they have erected around their own digital content.
But what happens when we lower these barriers? Innovation happens.
When libraries shift resources from barring or gatekeeping access to col-
lections and make a commitment to actively promote shared access and
use, history has shown that opportunities have emerged to break down
traditional barriers related to organization, collection, and access. Consider
these two examples:

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
http://dp.la
The DPLA is an ambitious project that has set out to surface a
digital public commons of cultural heritage information related
to the United States. Patterned after a similar project in Europe, 3
the DPLA is made possible by the availability and use of open
communication standards and a willingness to place one’s meta -
data into the public domain. And the results have been impres-
sive. As a portal for content, the DPLA provides access to nearly

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