MacKenzie Smith encourages sharing metadata.
“Every library, archive, and museum is sitting on a goldmine of information about our collections that we really, really should share, and make as openly accessible as possible, but we’re worried—there’s a lot of fear that we don’t own the data, that we can’t share the data, that something bad will happen to the data if we share it…the descriptive metadata, which is really what makes our collections findable to the rest of the world. It’s really valuable information, and we didn’t create it to make money on it—we created it to help people find our stuff. One of the things at this meeting that we’ve spent a lot of time talking about is: is there a best practice for sharing your metadata as linked open data? And I’m thrilled to say that we came up with some really solid recommendations for how to do that.”
From The Harvard Library Innovation Laboratory’s video interview, “MacKenzie Smith on open licenses for data and metadata”
Nate Hill posts Karen Coyle’s mind map of user-data interaction.
“Readers, librarians, you don’t have to know open data from strawberry rhubarb pie to look at this and get something out of it.”
From Nate Hill’s blog post for the Public Library Association, “Complexity made Simple”
Michael Santangelo sends out the Beta Sprint call!
“We are bringing this to your attention as the people behind the DPLA are seeking your input on what a virtual nationwide library of free online resources should look like. Don’t miss this opportunity to be heard!”
From Michael Santangelo’s blog post for the Brooklyn Public Library, “Digital Public Library of America Wants Your Help!”
Mike Kelley discusses a new ALA publication.
“The American Library Association’s Office for Information Technology Policy (OITP) has begun a new, primarily digital series of publications called “OITP Perspectives” which will provide an outlet for topics more specialized than those covered by the more familiar Policy Briefs.”
From Mike Kelley’s post for the Library Journal Insider, “New ALA Publication Begins With a Look at Digitizing Hidden Collections”
Kathleen (writing for Canadiana) offers explanations for the growing interest in Digital Library projects.
“For one thing, many digitized collections are NOT accessible via general search engines. They cannot index many full text digitized objects, and the metadata associated with these items are often limited or incomplete. In addition, some digitized collections are often contained in databases that cannot be penetrated by search engines.”
From Kathleen’s blog post for Canadiana, “Why are so many countries building ‘national’ digital libraries?”