[Libs-Or] OLA Quarterly Author Showcase | Mark Dahl & Zachariah Selley, Lewis & Clark College | DPLA in the Pacific Northwest: The Orbis Cascade Alliance Case

[Charles Wood]

This next OLA Quarterly author showcase is a writing team from Lewis &
Clark College, where Mark Dahl is currently Director of the Aubrey R.
Watzek Library, and Zachariah Selley is the Associate Head of Special
Collections and College Archivist. Please download and read their new
article, "DPLA in the Pacific Northwest: The Orbis Cascade Alliance Case,"
here: https://commons.pacificu.edu/olaq/vol24/iss4/5/

Abstract: The Orbis Cascade Alliance’s journey to becoming a Digital Public
Library of America (DPLA) Service Hub illustrates some important challenges
and opportunities in the world of digital cultural heritage work. Released
in 2013, DPLA brings together cultural heritage content on a national
digital platform. Since 2014 the Alliance has moved towards DPLA membership
as part of a broader strategy to aggregate its members’ digital cultural
heritage collections and make them more discoverable. Competing strategies
for making content discoverable, limited financial resources, and
differences in missions between institutions have been obstacles as the
Alliance has worked towards aggregated collections and DPLA membership. The
DPLA has experienced recent growing pains as evidenced by a staff
downsizing in November 2018 and the closing of a major Service Hub shortly
thereafter. Though the Alliance membership has made extensive progress in
metadata standardization and aggregation in preparation for a DPLA ingest,
as of June 2019, Alliance DPLA activity is on hold until a new Program
Manager for Unique and Local Content comes on board.

This article illustrates in detail a massive undertaking that you might not
have heard a lot about. Mark and Zachariah describe the work of this
regional team's efforts to make the cultural heritage and history of the
Pacific Northwest accessible to everyone in the future, so we can
understand our place in the world and build on it in incalculable and
amazing ways, some of which might even save us all.

Best wishes,
Charles Wood
OLA Communications
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