Page 199 - Building Digital Libraries

CHAPTER 7

FIGURE 7.7
The Ohio State University Internet Archive to HathiTrust
Data Transfer Plug-in

be used by any HathiTrust partner that was using the Internet Archive for
digitization.

Summary

Digital repositories offer the library community an opportunity to interact
with a growing number of information providers within today’s information
ecosystem. This offers the library community an opportunity to build upon
its shared legacy of data-sharing and serve as an example for other members
of the information community. This means providing the technical support
needed to enable metadata harvesting, as well as giving up control over how
that metadata is used once it has been harvested. Of course, other organiza-
tions benefit from this data-sharing as well, since more of their repositories’
content will be made available to a global audience through multiple access
points. The library community and digital repository implementers should
be moving in a direction that will enable users to access content within their
chosen workflow. Finding ways to free one’s metadata from the confines
of its digital repository or content management system offers a first step
towards this goal.

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