Community Stories

After attending the Global Interoperability and Linked Data Workshop, a meeting of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) in Amsterdam, Ed Summers from the Library of Congress reflected on the relationship between the leadership style of the steering committee and their commitment to developing the DPLA as a generative platform for rich discovery environments:

“The thing I learned at the meeting in Amsterdam is that this nebulousness is by design–not by accident. The DPLA steering committee aren’t really pushing a particular solution that they have in mind. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be a clear consensus about what problem they are trying to solve. Instead the steering committee seem to be making a concerted effort to keep an open, beginners-mind about what a Digital Public Library of America might be. [...] Keeping an open mind in situations like this takes quite a bit of effort. There is often an irresistable urge to jump to particular use cases, scenarios or technical solutions, for fear of seeming ill informed or rudderless. I think the DPLA should be commended for creating conversations at this formative stage, instead of solutions in search of a problem.”

Read the full post by Summers on his blog, Inkdroid.

The DLF/DCC Beta Sprint project was featured on the home page of the Graduate School of Library & Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The press release underscored the collaborative efforts of the current Beta Sprint project as well as its foundation on the collaborative IMLS Digital Collections and Content project:

“Professor Carole Palmer, director of the Center for Informatics Research in Science and Scholarship (CIRSS), has been awarded a planning grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to participate in the Beta Sprint project launched by the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).

Palmer is working with her co-PI Rachel Frick at the Digital Library Federation, a program of the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). They are developing a functional prototype that will redesign the IMLS Digital Collections and Content (IMLS DCC) resource as a core base of content for the DPLA. The IMLS DCC, originally launched in 2003, is an aggregation of digital collections from libraries, museums, and archives, supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and developed through a collaboration between CIRSS and the University Library.”

Other members of the DLF/DCC Beta Sprint team working with Palmer and Frick are coordinator Jacob Jett, research assistant Richard Urban, coordinator Katrina Fenlon, and research assistant Peter Organisciak (pictured below from left to right).

As part of LODLAM-DC, Jon Voss will deliver a free talk called “An Introduction to Linked Open Data in Libraries, Archives, & Museums” on Friday, September 16.

Based on an earlier talk given at NYPL Labs, Voss’s presentation will “explore the fundamental elements of Linked Open Data and discover how rapidly growing access to metadata within the world’s libraries, archives and museums is opening exciting new possibilities for understanding our past, and may help in predicting our future.”

This event is free and open to the public, so register soon. For a sneak peek, check out this slideshow from Voss’s earlier talk.

Paid Internship Opportunity: Research Assistant for the Digital Public Library of America planning initiative

Are you a student interested in helping to launch a large-scale digital public library in the United States? Excited about the future of online access to information? Want to collaborate closely with innovative partners in public and research libraries, government, publishing, and elsewhere?

The Berkman Center seeks two part-time Research Assistants for the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) planning initiative. The DPLA planning initiative is bringing together representatives from public and research libraries, the educational community, cultural organizations, state and local government, publishers, authors, and private industry in a series of meetings and workshops to examine strategies for improving public access to comprehensive online resources. More information about the initiative can be found at http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/research/dpla. These positions are ideal for students who are looking to learn more about, and contribute to, these efforts.

Position Responsibilities:

Primary responsibilities will be to support the DPLA Secretariat, which includes staying abreast of developments in the digital library field (including news related to e-publishing, copyright, linked open data, and other areas), blogging regularly on these issues, writing weekly round-ups of the DPLA public listserv, and contributing to the DPLA wiki and forthcoming website. The RAs will also assist with preparations for the DPLA plenary meeting in October and occasional workshops, including opportunities to create related multimedia. This position represents an ideal opportunity for those interested in digital humanities, intellectual property issues, and access to knowledge and information.

Required Education, Experience and Skills:

• Advanced writing and editing skills, with the ability to quickly draft and contextualize written materials within the suite of the project outputs;

• Excellent critical reading comprehension, with the ability to absorb material quickly;

• Attention to detail;

• Strong knowledge of basic HTML;

• Familiarity with common social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube;

• Prior wiki editing experience or a willingness to learn.

Additional Skills/Interests Helpful for This Position:

• Expertise in fields such as digital humanities, library and information science, law, or journalism;

• Media production, including experience recording and/or editing audio and/or video;

• Prior blogging experience;

• Familiarity with WordPress.

The Research Assistant Will Have the Opportunity to:

• Boost his or her research credentials;

• Creatively bridge research and practice;

• Become a key member of the Digital Public Library of America team;

• Participate in the greater Berkman Center community and engage in ongoing dynamic conversations at the forefront of thought on technology and society.

Time Commitment & Payment:

RAs work approximately 8-12 hours per week. Compensation is the standard Harvard RA/intern rate of $11.50/hour. No other benefits are provided.

This position is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and remote participation is not possible for this opportunity.

We’re looking to have RAs join us in fall 2011.

To apply:

Please send your current CV or resume and a cover letter summarizing your interest and experience to Rebekah Heacock at rheacock@cyber.law.harvard.edu with “Application for DPLA RA” in the subject line.

On August 11, 2011, DPLA chair John Palfrey announced the newest member of the Digital Public Library of America Steering Committee:

“I am writing with the good news that Dwight McInvaill, Director of the Georgetown County Library (South Carolina), will be joining the Digital Public Library of America Steering Committee.

The Steering Committee is working to bring together representatives from the educational community, public and research libraries, cultural organizations, state and local government, publishers, authors, and private industry in a series of meetings and workshops to discuss legal, policy, and technical issues surrounding public access to comprehensive online resources. We hope to emerge with a concrete workplan and a governance structure that captures the consensus of representatives of the country’s libraries, universities, archives, and museums for moving forward together with a shared vision for a Digital Public Library of America.

We are thrilled to welcome Dwight to the Steering Committee.”

Mr. McInvaill will bring to the steering committee 30 years of public library service, as well as experience chairing the American Library Association’s Taskforce on Rural School, Tribal, and Public Libraries and the Rural Libraries Committee of the Public Library Association. He is currently a board member of the Association of Rural and Small Libraries. In 2009, Mr. McInvaill was presented with an I Love My Librarian Award from the Carnegie Foundation and the New York Times.

This just in: the New York Times recently launched Longitude, an interactive map of the day’s news leveraging Linked Open Data, as a featured project of its larger beta620 website.

As described by Evan Sandhaus, its developer, Longitude links NYT subject headings to geographic and corporate or biographical data from Geonames and Freebase:

“When you open Longitude you’ll see a number of “Times T” pins plotted out in a Google Map. The locations for these pins were all derived from Geonames. Click on any pin and you’ll be presented with a pop-up balloon containing a list of the ten most recent, relevant Times articles. But wait, there’s more! For some locations such as Missouri, your balloon will have one or two additional tabs: “Natives” and/or “Companies.” Click on one of these tabs and you’ll be presented with list of locally-born people and locally-headquartered organizations. You can even view Times articles for these people and organizations.”

Read Sandhaus’s pitch for Longitude, in which he also promises future posts about technical details of the app.

In an article for Wired Magazine titled “Why Open Data Alone is Not Enough,” Jesse Lichtenstein acknowledges the data divide and suggests how it could be bridged:

“The concern that open data may simply empower the empowered is not an argument against open data; it’s an argument against looking at open data as an end in itself. Massive data dumps and even friendly online government portals are insufficient. Ordinary people need to know what information is available, and they need the training to be conversant in it. And if people are to have anything more than theoretical access to the information, it needs to be easy and cheap to use. That means investing in the kinds of organizations doing outreach, advocacy, and education in the communities least familiar with the benefits of data transparency. If we want truly open government, we still have to do the hard work of addressing basic and stubborn inequalities. However freely it flows, the data alone isn’t enough.”

Linked Data and Libraries 2011 was held at the British Library Conference Centre in London on Thursday, July 14, 2011. Below find a selection of sessions and slideshows.

View the afternoon session below, or view the morning session here.

Video streaming by Ustream

On the day of the conference, the British Library also introduced their new approach to publishing the British National Bibliography using linked data practices. Users can now preview the first subset of the LOD BNB, including books published or distributed in the UK since 2005, via the search service, the describe endpoint, and the SPARQL endpoint. Below are slides from a presentation by Neil Wilson, who heads the British Library’s Metadata Services, outlining the process behind creating the library’s LOD model.

Laura Campbell, CIO of the Library of Congress, delivered the keynote address at the 2011 SemTech Conference in San Francisco, CA. Her talk focused on “how linked data is helping us to do more with less” while managing the Library’s existing collections; maintaining its role as a leader in the distribution of canonical information; and following its mission to collect, preserve, and provide access to a born digital collection.

During her talk, Campbell said she hoped the takeaway would be that ”We need to get very clever about new methods of doing our mission, new methods of executing both getting the material and managing it and providing access to it.”

David Weinberger, senior researcher at the Berkman Center, filmed these interviews at the LOD-LAM Summit in San Francisco on June 2-3, 2011.

Want to join the conversation? Respond to the W3C Linked Library Data Incubator Group‘s call for public comment on the draft of their report. Feedback can sent as comments to individual sections posted on their dedicated blog or by email to an archived public mailing list at public-lld@w3.org using descriptive subject lines such as ‘[COMMENTS] “Benefits” section.’

http://youtu.be/swQYX4oqfB4

http://youtu.be/cY-aEuFLryo

Videos via the Harvard Library Innovation Laboratory Blog.