Integration of cultural data from digital repositories: an overview of the DPLA Hubs

ABSTRACT

Introduction:

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is an initiative aimed at expanding the reach of its content and the possibilities of improving and using data to generate new knowledge from data integration. The search for integration, however, results in a series of possibilities and challenges for digital repositories, providers and data servers.

Objective:

To present an overview of the technological solutions underlying data collection and availability from the DPLA partner repositories, named Hubs, to point out aspects of the interoperability opportunities and challenges they face in the search for integrated access.

Methodology:

This is a bibliographical, qualitative and exploratory research, with analysis based on the discussion found in the literature and the results obtained in the analysis of the platforms.

Results:

The technological solutions adopted both by the DPLA to collect and aggregate data and by the Hubs, data providers, which use different solutions to aggregate data from the various contributing cultural institutions and provide them to the DPLA, are presented as results.

Conclusion:

The study concluded that despite the technical, semantic and managerial challenges, great efforts have been undertaken to adopt solutions and best practices aimed at the engagement of data providers. Both the Hubs and their contributing institutions present programs to encourage and support digitization and documentation, as well as guidelines to guarantee the quality and legal rights of access to content, which is essential to improve users' experience and multi-dimension the possibilities to transform information into knowledge.

KEYWORDS:
Interoperability; Digital repositories; Digital Public Library of America; DPLA.