CLIR Hidden Collections and DPLA

By Rachel Frick, February 17, 2015.
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Recently, the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) announced a national competition to digitize and provide access to collections of rare or unique content in cultural heritage institutions, generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. This new iteration of the popular Hidden Collections program will enhance the emerging global digital research environment in ways that support expanded access and new forms of research for the long term. Its aim is to ensure that the full wealth of resources held by institutions of cultural heritage becomes integrated with the open web.

DPLA is excited to see among the program’s core values, the inclusion of three that are close to our hearts: Openness, Sustainability, and Collaboration.

We applaud CLIR in supporting DPLA by requiring all metadata created by the program to be explicitly dedicated to the public domain through a Creative Commons Public Domain Declaration License.

It is also admirable that the program states institutions may not claim additional rights or impose additional access fees or restrictions to the digital files created through the project, beyond those already required by law or existing agreements. Materials that are in the public domain in analog form must continue to be in the public domain once they have been digitized.

Here at DPLA we recognize that one key to sustainability is through the use of standards. CLIR’s Digital Library Federation program has developed an insightful wiki that not only is useful to program applicants, but to all those interested in how to manage digitization workflows as well.

Collaboration at DPLA not only happens among our contributing cultural heritage institutions, but we are also actively seeking ways for DPLA to partner with like-minded organizations. Working with CLIR and their Hidden Collections program is just one way we are connecting efforts, and we look forward to an even wider array of materials being made available to the public.