DPLA Board of Directors Call
January 14, 2014 / 1:00 PM EST
Present: Cathy Casserly, Paul Courant, Laura DeBonis, John Palfrey, Luis Herrera,
Jamie Hollier, Siva Vaidhyanathan, DPLA staff (including Franky Abbott, Dan Cohen,
Emily Gore, Amy Rudersdorf, Kenny Whitebloom), members of the public
Absent: Amy Ryan, Robert Darnton
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John Palfrey, President of the Board, commenced the call at 1:06 PM EST.
WELCOME MARK BREEDLOVE (DPLA TECH STAFF)
Dan Cohen, Executive Director, publicly welcomed Mark Breedlove as Technical
Specialist. Breedlove brings years of development experience to his role at DPLA, where
he will design, develop, test, integrate, support, and document the systems behind the
DPLA’s application programming interface (API) and datastores, in addition to the
public-facing website. Before coming to DPLA, Mark served as the Technical Director at
See.me, a social discovery website for artists, and the American Museum of Natural
History, building scientific web applications and content management systems for its
Science Division. Cohen said the addition of Breedlove to the tech staff, led by Director
of Technology Mark A. Matienzo, will greatly increase DPLA’s ability to do ingest and
front-end development, among other critical technical roles.
COMMITTEES UPDATE
Palfrey introduced this section of the call by noting that the four operational DPLA
committees are the inheritors of the workstreams created during the planning phase. In
addition to these operational committees, DPLA also has standing Board committees
related to finance and governance. Bob Darnton has agreed to chair the Governance
Committee, while Cathy Casserly has agreed to chair the Finance Committee (she will
take up her duties beginning in May 2014). Palfrey noted that under her tenure Casserly
plans to work on sustainability and potential business models for DPLA. Casserly said
that she’s delighted to step in and help DPLA at this critical moment in its development.
DPLA STAFF & BOARD AT ALA MIDWINTER (JANUARY 24-27)
The entire DPLA staff will be at the American Library Association’s Midwinter meeting
in Philadelphia on January 24-28, 2014. Board members Jamie Hollier and Luis
Herrera will also be at the conference.
Cohen shared DPLA staff’s schedule at ALA Midwinter 2014:
FRIDAY, JANUARY 24
LibHack 2014
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9:00 AM - 5:00 PM
LibHack 2014, sponsored by the LITA Library Code Year Interest Group,
OCLC, and the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), features
opportunities for beginning, intermediate, and advanced programmers to
create something and improve their coding chops. Registration is required;
more information is available here.
SUNDAY, JANUARY 26
Metadata Interest Group Meeting
8:30 AM - 10:00 AM
“Harvesting and Normalization at the Digital Public Library of America:
Lessons from a Diverse Aggregation,” presented by Kristy Berry Dixon
(Digital Library of Georgia), Sandra McIntyre (Mountain West Digital
Library), and Amy Rudersdorf (Digital Public Library of America). More
information is available here.
LITA Top Technology Trends Discussion Session
10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
“Top Technology Trends” is LITA's (Library and Information Technology
Association) premier program on changes and advances in technology.
Midwinter format consists of an informal roundtable discussion amongst
library technology experts and thought leaders, including DPLA’s Emily
Gore. More information is available here.
Digital Public Library of America "News You Can Use" Update
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM
This session will provide an update on the DPLA, including growth in its
collections and partnerships, and new initiatives and features. It will also
include a discussion of ways for institutions and individuals to get involved
in the DPLA. Following a short presentation by Executive Director Dan
Cohen, the DPLA staff will take questions from the audience and there will be
time as well for one-on-one conversations following the presentation
portion. More information is available here.
Cohen encouraged people attending ALA Midwinter to email him if they’re interested in
scheduling a short meeting during the conference.
UPDATE FROM DPLA EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Cohen said that DPLA continues to make forward progress into 2014, particularly in
terms of adding new material to its collections. The technical team is working to
streamline various technical processes, while the content team continues to forge new
partner relationships, manage existing ones, and ingest data. DPLA surpassed 5.5
million records earlier this month.
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Cohen mentioned that DPLA was included in Publishers Weekly’s “Top 10 Libraries
Stories of 2013.”
Cohen reported that the Community Reps program kicked-off this month, with nearly
100 volunteers from 36 states and 2 international countries. These volunteer Reps bring
together a wide-range of professional backgrounds, interests, and locations. DPLA plans
to conduct another round of acceptances in Spring 2014.
Cohen encouraged public participation in the Open Committee Calls, a monthly series of
open conference calls separate from the Board calls focused on topics related to the
operational committees. The Legal Committee, chaired by Pam Samuelson, convened a
successful open call this month in which she and others provided insight into key cases
and legal issues slated to take place in 2014. Cohen noted that the calls will now take
place on GoToWebinar rather than an ordinary telephone conference line. DPLA staff
will send notice of these calls at least a week prior over its mailing list and blog.
Lastly, Cohen thanked everyone who donated to the DPLA over the holiday season.
In response to his update, Palfrey asked how many people were on the DPLA staff, what
their strategic goals were for 2014, and how the public might help achieve those goals.
Cohen said the staff is currently at seven with the addition of Mark Breedlove (they will
also fill another technical position soon). DPLA is still in an early stage with regards to
content acquisition, which will set a foundation for all of the organization’s work in the
coming years. The technical and content staff will focus on streamlining the ingestion
process and bringing on more hubs. Cohen added that DPLA staff has been in touch
with potential hubs in over 40 states, and DPLA plans to announce new Service and
Content Hubs in 2014.
Cohen said that staff is also doing foundational work on how to use the materials in its
collections. This includes K-12 educational use, general use by the public, and more.
Outreach and raising awareness will remain a key strategic focus in 2014.
On the tech side, DPLA continues to work on adding additional functionality. There is a
host of back-end infrastructure work to do in 2014, and the technical staff will set up
technical systems to support specific item types that may otherwise flood the existing
collections when ingested.
Palfrey encouraged members of the Board to discuss the DPLA’s approach to content
acquisition and to share what strategy, if any, they would emphasize. For example,
should the staff focus on getting Service Hubs in all 50 states, or should they focus on
aggregating as much content as possible via the Content Hubs (or other types of hubs)?
Paul Courant said that he is a believer of “principled opportunism”: if something
amazing becomes available, you should pursue it, but there should always be a robust
practice of bringing on new hubs taking place in the background. Luis Herrera said that
public libraries are interested in providing content directly to the DPLA. However, he
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believes the Service Hub model is a flexible one and that the current infrastructure can
accommodate a diversity of interested participants.
Director for Content Emily Gore responded by highlighting the inherent tension in the
distinction between Content and Service Hubs, as well as the need to strike a balance
between staff capacity and goals. Gore said that lowering or doing away with the
250,000-item threshold for Content Hubs might result in bigger institutions skipping
the job of working with smaller institutions in favor of a 1:1 relationship with DPLA. For
that reason, DPLA is still committed to the Service/Content Hub model and thinks it
offers a strong way of integrating local participation.
Cohen added that there are many things DPLA wants to do and pursue, but it has to
prioritize objectives. That being said, Cohen said DPLA is always open to
recommendations from the Board and public, and that many conversations related to
these topics often occur in the background and not in public forums.
Palfrey recommended DPLA communicate current strategy and objectives publicly.
DPLA recently produced a document outlining the growth of the collections, and Palfrey
recommended DPLA update this document on a semi-regular basis.
QUESTIONS/COMMENTS FROM THE PUBLIC
Palfrey opened the floor to public comment and questions.
James Shulman, ARTstor, asked if there were any barriers to bringing new states
onboard. Gore said that funding was a hurdle at the state level. Many of the institutions
that DPLA currently works with had existing funding, but she said that there are many
others who are struggling to locate funding to organize a hub, even if enthusiasm and
interest is high. Cohen mentioned that there are other state-based models that could be
implemented, such as the Empire State Digital Network, which is made up of multiple
organizing institutions. Cohen said that he looks forward to generating pamphlets for
potential hubs so that they know exactly what’s involved in the process, best practices,
and other useful information.
Palfrey said that the initial slate of grant funding used to create the hubs infrastructure
was designed to distribute money to a select number of pilot locations. One of the
questions going forward is how DPLA can increase its ability to distribute funds to other
interested institutions.
Shulman responded with a recommendation that DPLA produce a short video
explaining the data exchange agreement process. He’s noticed there are some
organizations that are under the impression the agreement process is quite complex,
making them hesitant to participate. Gore noted that agreements vary from institution
to institution, but there are similarities between them.
Palfrey concluded the call at 1:44 PM EST.
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