Thoughts on a DPLA

Thoughts on a DPLA (Peggy Rudd, Danielle Plumer, Tom Peters, and Jim Scheppke) (PDF)

Submitted prior to the March 1, 2011 workshop on the content and scope of a proposed DPLA.

Peggy D. Rudd, Director and State Librarian

Texas State Library and Archives Commission

prudd@tsl.state.tx.us

512.463.5460

I regret that I am unable to attend the DPLA workshop tomorrow; however, I hope my thoughts and those of Danielle Plumer, Tom Peters, and Jim Scheppke will contribute to the group’s facilitated discussion. I look forward to participating in the steering committee’s work in coming months.

While I realize the main focus of the facilitated discussion tomorrow will be content, I hope the planning group will not lose sight of the issue of access. The February 17, 2011, article, Digital Age is Slow to Arrive in Rural America, in The New York Times is a reminder that 40 percent of rural households do not have adequate access to broadband Internet service and 28 percent of Americans don’t use the Internet at all. The recently published Opportunity for All: How the American Public Benefits from Internet Access at U.S. Libraries (http://tascha.washington.edu/usimpact) documents how public libraries facilitate access to a wide variety of content through public access computers. My caution to the group is to remember that if we build it, they will come only if they have a means to do so.

In David Rothman’s February 24, 2011, article, It’s Time for a National Digital-Library System in The Chronicle of Higher Education, he urges the DPLA planning group to reach beyond what might be seen as useful to an intellectual elite. His vision is quite expansive, reaching out to include content of a more practical nature. Let me give you an example of why this more expansive view is important. The Crockett County Public Library in Ozona, Texas, has become a busy training center. Rows Field Services, a service company working in Ozona clearing rights-of-way for a new power line, has been using the library’s public computers to complete required OSHA training. The work crew’s supervisor has been rotating his crewmen off the job to train and take the required OSHA tests for certification on the Internet. There is a crying need for practical applications just like this all across the country. Typically these activities fall under the category of e-government and require the formation of intergovernmental relationships that bring a broad spectrum of transactional capabilities into an access portal. Is there an aspect of the DPLA that could provide more easily discoverable government content/transaction portals that would hold a very practical value for Americans?

The link to teaching and lifelong learning is an important one. Here in Texas, we have about 120,000 families homeschooling approximately 300,000 children. In public K-12 schools, the cost of printed textbooks is so great that they are not purchased every year; thus, students are constantly at risk of being exposed to information that is outdated. In the current economic climate, more higher education courses are being delivered through distance education. There is little doubt that the DPLA, broadly conceived and efficiently rendered, would make an enormous difference for these groups and many others.

The Texas State Library and Archives Commission is a partner with the National Library Services for the Blind and Physically Handicapped in the Library of Congress to provide books and magazines in alternative formats to the more than 20,000 eligible users. In addition to the books made available from NLS, we have a thriving volunteer recording studio with three recording booths that are busy every evening and on Saturday. Some of these volunteer recordings have passed NLS’s quality assurance review; most have not. Therefore, most of the recordings made in our studio are available only to Texas patrons. Yet these recordings are made fairly under provisions of current copyright law and could be shared with other providers of this service in other states. There are other states that have recording programs as well. The DPLA would be an ideal spot for the sharing of these recordings with those who are eligible for this service.

Danielle Plumer, Ph.D.

Coordinator, Texas Heritage Online

Texas State Library and Archives Commission

dplumer@tsl.state.tx.us

512.463.5852

Identify any additional particular collections or sets of content that should be considered. Please add your comments and recommendations for key lines of inquiry.

I find audience/user analysis to be very helpful when considering collections. There are several different audiences for an effort such as this:

1. Readers of popular literature
   For these users, there is little free digital content already available due to copyright and other restrictions, but this is the area in which there is the most current demand, due to the popularity of e-book readers.
   1. Key lines of inquiry
      1. Is copyright reform needed? Would it provide anything meaningful? Or might libraries be better off proceeding under existing copyright law, as the Internet Archive has done? Note that academic libraries are doing this as well, rather more quietly, under the auspices of interlibrary loan.
      2. How can libraries respond to the emerging trend of self-published content? Much self-publication is done through vendors such as Amazon.com; could libraries (perhaps working with publishers and groups such as the Author’s Guild) provide an alternative publication mechanism?
      3. Which formats to use? Note that much existing digitized content is not compatible with ePub or other e-reader compatible formats, as it is image-based with a background layer of uncorrected OCR. Considerable work/investment will be required to standardize existing content.
      4. Metadata issues. A Digital Public Library of America would presumably provide access to content through metadata. There are currently two main types of metadata: MARC, often accessible through OCLC’s WorldCat, and Dublin Core, which is the native type of metadata used in most digital library systems. Other open bibliographic data systems (such as that used by the OpenLibrary) have not really taken hold. Metadata standards for content and format should be adopted early, and existing sources of metadata should be cross walked to the adopted format, which should be made as open and non-proprietary as possible.
   2. Existing sources of free content:
      1. Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/
         Public domain ebooks, available generally as text only, although in some cases audio files are also available. Plain text, HTML, ePub, Kindle MOBI, and Plucker formats are available.
      2. Internet Archive eBook and Texts Archive: http://www.archive.org/details/texts
         The Internet Archive is actively scanning books in partnership with many libraries and institutions. Whenever allowed by copyright and contract law, the resulting e-books are posted here for public consumption. Books are made available in a variety of formats; most are available in ePub format as well as plain text and PDF. Some books are available in Kindle's MOBI format, and a growing number are available in the DAISY format, as well. Materials in other formats (esp. video) are also available.
      3. OpenLibrary: http://www.openlibrary.org
         The sister site to the Internet Archive Text Archive, this site also includes a copyrighted number of books, which are available in some cases only to OverDrive subscribers. Other e-books are available for 2 week loans, which require a reader or computer with Adobe Digital Editions installed for digital rights management. For users with a DRM key from the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped, a large collection of books is available in the DAISY format.
      4. The Online Books Page: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/
         This resource, maintained by John Mark Ockerbloom of the University of Pennsylvania, lists over one million free books available at other sites on the Web, including Project Gutenberg, the Internet Archive, Google Books, and others. Many of the books listed here will not be readable on an e-book reader due to format issues, but it is still a good place to check for available e-books.
      5. LibriVox: http://librivox.org/
         LibriVox provides free audio versions of public domain books, recorded by volunteers. Files are available in mp3 or ogg vorbis format and will play on many readers and most computers.
      6. Baen Free Library: http://www.baen.com/library/
         Baen Books is now making available — for free — a number of its titles in electronic format. Anyone who wishes can read these titles online — no conditions, no strings attached. You can also download the books in one of several formats.
2. Genealogists and (family) historians
   Most existing digitization projects have treated this group as core users, either explicitly or implicitly, and many of the sources of content already identified apply here.
   1. Key lines of inquiry
      1. The self-published content question definitely applies here, as many genealogists already attempt to provide their local libraries with copies of family histories and other materials.
      2. Competition with commercial genealogical service and content providers (e.g., Ancestry.com, Footnote.com, NewspaperArchive.com). Some of these providers will digitize archival content for free as long as they are given a period of exclusive access. Will we jeopardize these relationships if we set up an effective alternative distribution system?
      3. FamilySearch might be willing to become a partner in the DPLA effort – that’s partly a guess on my part, but I’ve had several conversations with FamilySearch representatives at ALA conferences and elsewhere, and they seem open to expanding their current partnerships with libraries where consistent with their mission. They also have an existing API that might be useful.
   2. Existing sources of free content (not listed on DPLA Candidate list of 02/11):
      1. Statewide newspaper digitization projects (e.g., Colorado, Utah)
      2. Family History Archive (FamilySearch and BYU: http://www.lib.byu.edu/fhc/index.php)
      3. There is a good list of state digitization projects at http://www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/statememory/
      4. IMLS Digital Collections and Content: http://imlsdcc.grainger.uiuc.edu/. IMLS has funded the University of Illinois Urbana-Champlain to develop a list of collections funded by IMLS grants; there are some efforts being made to include projects funded by LSTA grants, as well.
3. Academic research
   Just as most theses and dissertations are out of scope for public libraries, many (but not all) sources of digitized content from academic digital libraries will be out of scope for a Digital Public Library. However, partnerships, analogous to physical interlibrary loan, should be investigated to ensure broad access to content.

State the two or three most interesting issues or questions you think should be confronted in the [upcoming meeting] agenda.

1. The most pressing question, I think, is what the scope and ultimate purpose of the effort will be. Is it to provide access to content digitized by academic institutions, as implied by the NY Times article of 1/9/2011, "Playing Catch-Up in a Digital Race"? Is it to provide access to historical treasures on a national scale, similar to Europeana and other initiatives? Or is it to be a public library, addressing some of the issues identified in the 2010 COSLA eBook Feasibility Study for Public Libraries report? I am concerned that these goals are incompatible and have radically different audiences.
2. Whatever the goal of the project, the questions of copyright reform, particularly with respect to Orphan Works, cannot be ignored. Recent analysis by the Univ. of Michigan and others indicates that approximately 20% of works published before 1963 have an unknown copyright status, often due to their status as Orphan Works. If audio is to be considered in scope, the problem is even larger, due to the fragmented nature of state copyright laws which were in effect for audio materials published before 1972.

Share with us any relevant reading materials or links from which you think the research initiative would benefit. We will add them to our evolving list of resources.

• Johnson, L., Smith, R., Willis, H., Levine, A., and Haywood, K. (2011). The 2011 Horizon Report. Austin, Texas: The New Media Consortium. http://wp.nmc.org/horizon2011/.
• Council of Library and Information Resources and the Library of Congress. The State of Recorded Sound Preservation in the United States: A National Legacy at Risk in the Digital Age. (2010). Commissioned for and sponsored by the National Recording Preservation Board, Library of Congress. Washington, DC: CLIR. http://www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub148abst.html
• Society of American Archivists. (2009). Orphan Works: Statement of Best Practices. Chicago, IL: SAA. http://www.archivists.org/standards/OWBP-V4.pdf
• United States Copyright Office, Library of Congress. (2006). Report on Orphan Works: A Report of the Registrar of Copyrights. Washington, DC: Library of Congress. http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/orphan-report-full.pdf
• MobileRead Wiki. (2011). http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Main_Page

Tom Peters, CEO

TAP Information Services

tpeters@tapinformation.com

816.616.6746

Identify any additional particular collections or sets of content that should be considered. Please add your comments and recommendations for key lines of inquiry.

1. User-created content
2. Audio books
3. Children's books
4. Films: The UK is working on a Digital Public Space initiative, and, believe it or not, the BBC, the British Film Institute, and the British Library are collaborating on this project. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/nov/01/tony-ageh-interview-bbc-archive. Any planning for a Digital Public Library of America must include discussions with the American Film Institute and should include television as well. Remind the DPLA planning group that DVD rentals through public libraries are not an insignificant slice of the overall content pie.

I urge the DPLA planning group to think beyond what appears to be a primary focus on scholarly, research collections. There's nothing wrong with research collections, but, if this is going to be a truly digital public library of America, the DPLA team will need to look far beyond research collections to things such as the collection categories I've listed here.

In addition, I haven’t seen any mention of public services for the DPLA. A national reference service as part of DPLA makes sense, and some sort of online public programming seems reasonable to me, too, but I'm fond of that concept. Another glaring absence is any mention of things such as user-created content, public participation in the development of the DPLA (through other types of contributions -- reviews, tags, ratings, links, mashups, etc.), and all the "here comes everybody" nature of many Web 2.0 tools.

State the two or three most interesting issues or questions you think should be confronted in the [upcoming meeting] agenda.

1. Online Communities: Everybody knows that libraries serve communities, but usually we think in terms of place-based communities. The DPLA certainly will serve place-based communities across America, but perhaps the real flowering here will be of online communities of Americans who, for instance, really like certain authors or genres, and through the DPLA find ways to connect and communicate and create good things together.
2. Funding and ongoing revenue generation
3. Management/Leadership: My hunch is that Darnton would, if asked, happily serve as a combined Washington and Jefferson of this new DPLA, esp. because the Harvard Libraries are restructuring. If so, how would a more populist outlook represented?
4. Governance

Share with us any relevant reading materials or links from which you think the research initiative would benefit. We will add them to our evolving list of resources.

• Mike Shatkin's blog (http://www.idealog.com/blog/). I actually disagree more often than I agree with what Mike writes, but he is a rare bird in that he is a publishing insider who seems to be forthright, and his writings help clarify my thinking about these issues, esp. when I disagree with him. Actually, the DPLA Steering Committee probably should have someone like Mike or someone in senior management at one of the Big 6 Publishers on it.
• The COSLA Report (http://www.cosla.org/documents/COSLA2270_Report_Final1.pdf), of course. But, although the three of us were involved in that, I think it does a very good job of articulating some possibilities for public libraries (including the proposed DPLA), beyond just creating collections and opening the doors.
• I just discovered this book today, but it looks really interesting and innovative, because most histories of the book and reading (and people today discussing the "meaning" of the book and the future of reading as we all try to figure out where the current revolution is headed) usually look back to the first century of movable type printing in Europe. Piper seems to be suggesting that much of the way we collectively think about books and reading today comes from the Romantics, not from Gutenberg and the early era of printing and selling printed books in Europe. Piper, Andrew. 2009. Dreaming in Books: The Making of the Bibliographic Imagination in the Romantic Age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. On March 23, 2010, this book won the MLA prize for a first book. No Kindle edition available. Portions are available online via Google Books (http://books.google.com/books?id=2d7_5vZR-2kC&printsec=frontcover&cd=1&source=gbs_ViewAPI#v=onepage&q&f=false)

Thanks for asking me for my input. I hope a lot of open reports and discussions burst forth during and after the March 1st meeting, leading to some thoughtful, innovative, and rapid development of a DPLA.

Jim Scheppke, State Librarian

Oregon State Library

jim.b.scheppke@state.or.us

503.378.4367

Peggy: I second all of Tom’s thoughts about this. I particularly like the idea of a national virtual reference service. We have great open source software that we developed with the Ohio State Library that could make that happen. I think there could be a separate workgroup of librarians that have worked with virtual reference to design this part of the DPLA (we have a really good one in Oregon).

Identify any additional particular collections or sets of content that should be considered. Please add your comments and recommendations for key lines of inquiry.

I think there is a temptation to look in the small end of the telescope and start looking for what should be in the DPLA. Better I think to look in the other end and ask, what shouldn’t be in the DPLA. My vision of a DPLA is that it would have nearly everything except what is commercially available. This would include everything in the public domain (books, images, newspapers, magazines, film, audio, etc.) and all "orphan works" (in copyright but out of print). Maybe the DPLA would be the stimulus for Congress to finally pass orphan works legislation to make orphan works available to DPLA (and not just to Google).

State the two or three most interesting issues or questions you think should be confronted in the [upcoming meeting] agenda.

The most interesting questions for me would be the one above (how do you scope the DPLA), and secondly, how does the DPLA help public and academic libraries fulfill their mission and not harm that ability. The potential of harm is there if the DPLA is scoped, designed, and promoted in such a way that people begin to question the value of their local library. It's a very tricky business. I don't have the answers, but the steering committee needs to come up with them. Primum non nocere (First, do no harm).

Share with us any relevant reading materials or links from which you think the research initiative would benefit. We will add them to our evolving list of resources.

What a librarian-like question! I don't have anything to add to Tom's reading list, but I would say that I hope the committee is well versed in best practices from other countries, several of which, I believe, have already been at this for awhile. I'm sure there is something to learn by studying the planning and implementation that has already been done elsewhere in the world.