DODL: THE FEDERATED DIGITAL LIBRARY
A Strategic DLF Initiative to Develop a Shared
Collection of Academic Information Resources


BACKGROUND

The Digital Library Federation's May 1995 charter
<http://www.diglib.org/about/dlfcharter.htm> calls for
the development of a "distributed, open digital library"
(DODL).

At the DLF's Strategic Planning session in
February 2003 the assembled representatives affirmed
this original DLF goal, recognizing that the digital
library and the scholarship and teaching it supports
would be better served by centrally pooled library
content that can appear as a unified whole when this
is desirable, and from which we can draw files into
local collections for innovative re-use and re-articulation.

It was determined at the strategic planning session to
appoint an "Initiative Committee" to elaborate further
the goals and specifications of such a distributed, open
digital library.

THE COMMITTEE

The appointment of the Initiative Committee is made by the
Executive Committee of the DLF.  The term of the Initiative
Committee is two years, although initial appointments will
be a mix of one year and two year terms, so membership might
be staggered across the years.  Terms are renewable.

The Initiative Committee will consist of a chair, five other
members, and the DLF Director as staff to the Initiative
Committee.  First appointees shall be:

Dan Greenstein, CDL: 2 years
Paula Kaufman, UIUC: 1 year
Mike Keller, Stanford: 1 year
Wendy Lougee, Minnesota (chair): 2 years
Carol Mandel, NYU: 2 years
Winston Tabb, Johns Hopkins: 1 year

David Seaman, Director of the DLF, will liaise between this
committee and the existing and new DLF working groups whose
expertise will be needed to carry this out.

CHARGE TO THE INITIATIVE COMMITTEE

A first report is expected in June 2003.

The Initiative Committee is charged with the following:

1.      Develop an initial theme or focus for the DODL;

2.      Establish functional specifications for assembling,
providing intellectual access (meaning provision of metadata
as well as discovery and retrieval methods), distributing,
and preserving the DODL.  Sharable, perhaps open source,
software applications are necessary for a common approach
to building and operating the DODL across numerous
institutional sub-collections.

3.      Appoint a technical subcommittee (and perhaps other
subcommittees) to advise the Initiative Committee

4.      Suggest ways and means to incorporate the following
conditions or operations:

4a.     For this initiative to be credible, a key shared
assumption would be the need for true, digital archives at
the project's foundation;

4b.     There will be various registries, freely accessible;

4c.     The test phase will need access-authorization control;

4d.     There will be a common platform for user access, and
common coding and formats for various kinds of objects;

4e.     Tests should be conducted with user groups as the
project progresses to determine how users can manipulate
the content creatively, pulling material from the DODL
into their own teaching and research environments for re-use
that goes far beyond simply visiting the content on individual
websites.


David Seaman
Director, Digital Library Federation
1755 Massachusetts Ave., NW, Suite 500
Washington, DC 20036
tel: 202-939-4750
fax: 202-939-4765
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
web: http://www.diglib.org/