MWDL's Best Practices for Geospatial Metadata Creation now available

If you're interested in having your digital collections materials show up on the map interface provided on the Digital Public Library of America portal, start planning to add geospatial metadata to your records! The Mountain West Digital Library Geospatial Discovery Task Force spent many months reviewing different options, and now Best Practices for Geospatial Metadata Creation for MWDL Cultural Heritage Digital Repositories and the companion document, Instructions for Assigning Geospatial Metadata Using GeoNames.org, have been approved by the MWDL Digitization Committee and are available for MWDL partners to use.

GeoNames data for Idaho State Capitol.

The new MWDL documents are on the “Policies and Guidelines” page on the MWDL website.  Please feel free to point people to the page or to the particular links above and on the page in any of your websites or documents. We want to continue to get the word out about these valuable standards.

We were delighted to see the recent Geographic and Temporal Guidelines that the Digital Public Library of America released about geospatial metadata in DPLA.  It looks like the MWDL Task Force's documents are well in line with DPLA’s Guidelines -- not too surprising, given the high level of coordination MWDL’s task force had with DPLA staff throughout our work!

Congratulations again to all task force members on fine work. An especial big thanks goes to the co-facilitators of the Task Force: Liz Woolcott from Utah State University Merrill-Cazier Library and Kristen Jensen from the Utah Department of Heritage and Arts.  The strength of what we have produced together is the best example of why we all collaborate. 

New self-guided curriculum for digitization

As part of the Public Library Partnerships Project over the last year and a half, Mountain West Digital Library staff and partners helped design, prepare, and present training modules about digital skills training. MWDL was one of four Service Hubs in the Digital Public Library of America to participate in this national project. 

First we presented the trainings at three workshops for public librarians, two in Utah and one in Montana, as part of the MWDL network's assistance to public libraries in digitizing and sharing their collections online. Then, along with staff from the other Service Hubs, we recorded the best-of-the-best of the training modules for online distribution nationally. 

Many thanks go to Anna Neatrour, who as MWDL Metadata Librarian created a wonderful metadata section and contributed to much of the rest of the curriculum as well. We are also grateful to Jennifer Birnel, the project director of the Montana Memory Project, who helped make the workshop in Montana a great success and participated in the recording round. Thanks also go to Rebekah Cummings, who helped create and present many sections of the curriculum during her service as MWDL Assistant Director/Outreach Librarian. Key contributions to the digital reformatting module came from Matt Brunsvik from University of Utah Marriott Library and Catherine McIntyre and Brent Seavers from Utah Valley University. Together we are very proud to have been part of this important project and to now be able to share these training resources!

For more information about the new curriculum materials, or about the Public Library Partnerships Project, see the announcement from DPLA at http://dp.la/info/2015/10/07/new-self-guided-curriculum-for-digitization/.  Please use, re-use, and distribute these materials freely!