Over the past twelve months representatives from Europeana, the DPLA and Creative Commons have been exploring the possibilities for a collaborative approach to rights statements that can be used to communicate the copyright status of cultural objects published via our platforms. This work is close to the heart of both Europeana and the DPLA as we both seek to share clear and accurate information about copyright status with users.

New York is home to nine library and research councils that comprise the NY3Rs Association, Inc. (NY3Rs). While it occupies its own dark blue circle in the image above, Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO), home to our Service Hub, is one of the nine regional councils that make up the NY3Rs. In addition to myriad digital content hosted at individual organizations statewide (the small gray circles in the diagram), New York is also home to four large-scale collaborative digital projects. These projects are all supported and facilitated by the NY3Rs regional councils.

The DPLAFest schedule is packed with interesting sessions–everything from Ebooks, to project management, to digitization, and education, has a space in the lineup. A set of those programs is related to the DPLA Hubs and the work that they do. In addition to showcasing the incredible work being done by institutions that are part of the DPLA Hub network, it’s a great way for attendees from aspiring Hubs to find out more about the application process. Here are some Hub Highlights from this year’s fest:

The Internet Archive and the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) are pleased to announce a joint collaborative program to enhance sharing of collections from the Internet Archive in the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). The Internet Archive will work with interested Libraries and content providers to help ensure their metadata meets DPLA’s standards and requirements. After their content is digitized, the metadata would then be ready for ingestion into the DPLA if the content provider has a current DPLA provider agreement.

The Minnesota Digital Library (MDL) is one of four DPLA Service Hubs to be sub-awarded a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, through the DPLA, for the Public Library Partnership Project (PLPP). In this post, Carla Urban details MDL’s experience working on the project with public librarians in Minnesota.

Hot on the heels of last week’s announcement of KriKri and Heidrun, we here at DPLA HQ are excited to release the newest revision of the DPLA Metadata Application Profile, version 4.0 (DPLA MAP v4.0).

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is pleased to announce the addition of four Service Hubs that will be joining our Hub network. The Hubs represent Tennessee, Maryland, Maine and the Caribbean. The addition of these Hubs continues our efforts to help build local community and capacity, and further efforts to build an on-ramp to DPLA participation for every cultural heritage institution in the United States and its territories.

Thanks to all of you who attended our webinar. We had a great turnout and hope you found it interesting and informative. As promised, you can now find the video for our recent Metadata Aggregation webinar below or over at our Vimeo account. Links to download each presenter’s slides are included in this post as well. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to get to all of the questions that came up during the webinar. However, our presenters agreed to answer a few more in writing for our blog. You can find them below in the Extended Q&A section.

Last week, Dan Cohen shared the DPLA’s 2015-2017 strategic plan including DPLA’s goals for community-driven growth and collaborative expansion. Now seems like a good time, too, to look back at the work that our partners and we have done over the past year to increase the numbers and diversity of formats, topics, institutions, and collections that are offered through DPLA.

On January 22, at 2 pm eastern, we will be hosting a webinar about metadata aggregation. We’ll be taking an inside look at aggregation best practices at two of our DPLA Service Hubs in North Carolina and South Carolina. In addition, DPLA has been working on improving our existing tools as well as creating some new ones for metadata aggregation and quality control.We’d like to share what’s in place and preview some of our plans and we hope to get feedback on future directions.

The Digital Public Library of America seeks applicants to serve as Service Hubs and Content Hubs in our growing national network. The applications and corresponding instructions are now available.

The Digital Commonwealth’s “metadata mob” is a fun and creative type of mob — less roughneck and more spontaneous dance routine. Except, instead of wildly cavorting to Do-Re-Mi in train stations, they cut-and-paste, transcribe, script, spell check, authorize, regularize, refine, edit, and enhance.

Digitization efforts in the US have, to date, been overwhelmingly dominated by academic libraries, but public libraries are increasingly finding a niche by looking to their local collections as sources for original content. The Hennepin County Library has partnered with the Minnesota Digital Library (MDL)—and now the Digital Public Library of America—to bring thousands of items to the digital realm from its extensive holdings in the James K. Hosmer Special Collections Department. These items include maps, atlases, programs, annual reports, photographs, diaries, advertisements, and trade catalogs.

Heather Harren, Education and Outreach Manager at the Blue Earth County Historical Society in Mankato, MN, describes the national attention that has been brought to her organization through their participation as a contributor to the Minnesota Digital Library and DPLA.

Washington, DC & BOSTON — The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced today a $999,485 grant to the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) for a major expansion of its infrastructure.

More awesome news from DPLA! Hot on the heels of announcements about newly added materials from the Medical Heritage Library and the Government Printing Office, we’re excited to share that some 92,000 items from the J. Paul Getty Trust are now also available.

We were pleased to share yesterday that nearly 60,000 items from the Medical Heritage Library have made their way into DPLA, and we’re now doubly pleased to share that nearly 150,000 items from the Government Printing Office’s (GPO) Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP) are now also available via DPLA.

The Medical Heritage Library (MHL) is pleased to announce that MHL content can now be discovered through the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). The MHL, a specialized research collection stored in the Internet Archive, currently includes nearly 60,000 digital rare books, serials, audio and video recordings, and ephemera in the history of medicine, public health, biomedical sciences, and popular medicine from the medical special collections of 22 academic, special, and public libraries.

Bob Sandeen describes the Nicollet County Historical Society’s experience as a contributing institution to the Minnesota Digital Library and the DPLA.

The DPLA is pleased to announce an update to the Metadata Application Profile (MAP). The DPLA MAP is the basis for how data is structured and validated in DPLA, and guides how data is stored, serialized, and made available through our API in JSON-LD. The MAP is based on the Europeana Data Model (EDM), and integrates the experience and specific needs for aggregating the data of America’s cultural heritage institutions.