Announcing DPLA Workshops and Groups

We’re pleased to share some news regarding the DPLA open committee calls, a series of conference calls that we’ve hosted for the past two years, and that helped us transition from DPLA’s planning phase into its implementation and existence as a nonprofit. Based on helpful feedback from our board, committees, and community, we have come to understand that these calls, which have been rather broad-based (on “Content,” “Tech,” etc.), have in many ways been superseded by our more focused open discussions, e.g., around our work on Hydra, and of course our critical ongoing work with our hubs and national network.

Those working areas, interest groups, and related virtual conversations will expand, and along with our continued open quarterly board calls, replace the open committee calls starting this fall. We are also in the process of starting up new groups to explore and better understand topics that are important to our community, including education, ebooks, archival description, Hydra-in-a-box, and others. Some of this work is taking place in special working groups like the Ebooks Working Group, the Archival Description Working Group, and the Education Advisory Committee. This initial slate of groups is just a starting point, and over time we will add new groups to reflect current priorities and interests. We expect that those who have been participating in the open committee calls will find one or more of these groups helpful, and we encourage you to get involved by signing up for the public discussion lists associated with these groups if you are interested.

As an additional replacement for the open calls, we’re excited to announce a new series of public workshops that will begin in October. These new online conversations will highlight subjects central to our community, such as education, metadata, and copyright, and will also include time for general DPLA updates and questions. We will be sure to rotate the topics so that areas formerly covered by our former content, tech, legal, and outreach calls are included, but the new format, piloted last spring, will allow us to get into much greater depth than we have been able to do on the more diffuse open calls.

We’re looking forward to instituting these changes over the next couple of months. Below you will find an initial schedule for these new public workshops, including links to register where appropriate. We will be adding more discussions to the list below as the year progresses.

Upcoming DPLA Workshops

Using DPLA for Teaching and Learning (November 3, 2015, 7:00pm Eastern)
In this workshop, DPLA staff and members of the DPLA’s Education Advisory Committee will demonstrate how participants can use DPLA’s search capabilities, primary source sets, and exhibitions in instruction. Questions? Email us.
Register

What is an API? (Winter 2016)
Details forthcoming! Sign up for our mailing list to receive updates.

Copyright basics (1 of 2)(Spring 2016)
Details forthcoming! Sign up for our mailing list to receive updates.

How to Create Good Rights and Access Statements (2 of 2)(Spring 2016)
Details forthcoming! Sign up for our mailing list to receive updates.

DPLA Groups

Archival Description Working Group
The Archival Description Working Group is composed of representatives from DPLA Partner institutions as well as national-level experts in digital object description and discovery. The group will explore solutions to support both item-level and aggregate-level approaches to digital object description and access and will develop recommendations, data models, and tools as appropriate.

eBooks Work Group
The purpose of this group is to hold focused conversations about developing a framework for a national ebook strategy. Topics include: User stories; Scoping tools/Challenges relating to content types; Defining the national marketplace; Licensing Best Practices Workgroup; and Demonstration Projects. Sign up for the discussion list to get involved in the conversation.

Education
The purpose of this group is to share news and announcements about DPLA’s education projects.

Hydra-in-a-box
DPLA, Stanford University and DuraSpace are partnering to extend the existing Hydra project codebase and its vibrant and growing community to build, bundle, and promote a feature-rich, robust, flexible digital repository that is easy to install, configure, and maintain. This next-generation repository solution — “Hydra in a Box” — will work for institutions large and small, incorporating the capabilities and affordances to support networked resources and services in a shared, sustainable, national platform. The overall intent is to develop a digital collections platform that is not just “on the web,” but “of the web.”

Open eBooks
Open eBooks is an app containing thousands of popular and award-winning titles that are free for unlimited use by low-income students. These eBooks can be read in an unlimited fashion, without checkouts or holds. Children from low-income areas can access these eBooks, which include some of the most popular works of the present and past, and read as many as they like without incurring any costs. We believe access to these books will serve as a gateway to even more reading, whether at libraries, bookstores, or through other ebook reading apps. Open eBooks is a partnership between Digital Public Library of America, New York Public Library, and First Book, with support from Baker & Taylor. Sign up for the discussion list to get involved in the conversation.

Upcoming DPLA Board Calls

• Wednesday, September 16, 2015 at 3:00 PM Eastern
• [Governance Committee] Wednesday, November 18, 2015, 1:00 PM Eastern
• Tuesday, December 15, 2015 at 3:00 PM Eastern