Ready... Set....Go!

Listen to this article

A group of six WSC coeds ready for a race on the ice skating rink, WSC campus, ca. early 1940s. Courtesy, Leslie J. Savage Library.

Earlier this month the Plains to Peaks Collective went live with its first collection in the Digital Public Library of America. We know that there may be potential partners in Colorado and Wyoming that are eager to participate but are unsure if they are ready. Good news! We are here to help you determine that. We created the below checklist to help you determine if your institution is ready to contribute metadata records to DPLA through the PPC.

Do you have digital collections that are publicly available? If not, see our Digital Toolkit for digitization project planning and implementation.
Is your institution able and willing to sign the PPC Service Hub Participation Agreement agreeing to contribute your metadata to the DPLA under a CC0 license? Here is the PPC Service Hub Participation Agreement Template.
Are your digital collections (images, texts, audio, video, etc.) available on a publicly accessible collections management system?
Do the digital collections that you wish to share meet the DPLA’s current Collection Development Guidelines? The DPLA currently does not accept the following:
- Most Scholarly material (i.e. electronic thesis and dissertations, journal articles). See Collection Development Guidelines for more information.
- Finding aids or archival collection guides (i.e. EAD files)
- Items that do not resolve to a publicly accessible URL (i.e. embargoed, hidden or restricted files.)
- Datasets
Does your Content Management System (CMS) have a way of sharing your collection metadata, for example through an OAI-PMH feed, API, xml export or CSV file? [If you are unsure please contact us.]
Do each of the records in your collection include a unique title field and a valid rights statement? See the PPC Metadata Guidelines for further information on the DPLA requirements.
Does your system store preview/thumbnail images of the objects in your collection?
Are you able to provide, in each of your records, a link back to the record on your local site? [This link allows the DPLA portal to point back to each object in its local context.]
Do you have a staff member who can work with PPC staff to address any issues related to sharing your collection metadata with the DPLA?

If you have any questions about the above considerations and/or are unsure if you meet the requirements for contributing to the PPC and the DPLA, please contact us. We are very willing to work with potential partners to fulfill the requirements listed above. If you would like to learn more about the PPC visit our site, ppc.cvlsites.org or contact me at ljeremias@coloradovirtuallibrary.org

[Checklist adapted from PA Digital Readiness Guidelines. Thanks PA!]