NEWS RELEASE 
 
For Immediate Release: 22 November 2006
Contact: David Seaman <[log in to unmask]>

MAJOR NEW REPORT ON BUILDING THE DISTRIBUTED DIGITAL LIBRARY PUBLISHED

Washington, D.C. - The Digital Library Federation (DLF) is pleased to
announce "Contexts and Contributions: Building the Distributed Library,"
by Martha L. Brogan (http://purl.org/dlf/pubs/dlf106/). The report is a
major contribution to DLF's suite of work that focuses on harvestable
metadata and services that help us access and use our distributed
digital content more effectively. 

"Contexts and Contributions" grew from work Ms. Brogan undertook for DLF
in 2003, published as "A Survey of Digital Library Aggregation Services"
(http://purl.org/dlf/pubs/dlf101/). That environmental scan influenced
our understanding of early attempts to craft aggregated digital library
services that serve students and scholars well, and it had a positive
impact on the development of the services that followed.

"Contexts and Contributions" draws our attention to major developments
in scholarly communications and digital libraries, and provides us with
a detailed evaluation of the shifting landscape of data and service
providers. Based on research conducted from October 2005 to June 2006,
the new study gives us a rich comparative analysis of digital library
aggregation services, including a clear-sighted view of the obstacles
requiring further attention to realize an open, distributed digital
library.

The Digital Library Federation is delighted to have another opportunity
to underscore our commitment to those standards, tools, and technologies
that allow us to build innovative services that scholars and students
need to produce richer teaching, learning, and scholarship.  This work
is part of a larger multi-institutional initiative generously funded by
the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS).


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Martha Brogan is the incoming director of collection development and
management at the University of Pennsylvania libraries (December 2006).
Prior to that she has been an independent library consultant, and has
two decades of experience in research libraries at the University of
Minnesota, Yale University, and Indiana University. Ms. Brogan is the
author of two previous studies commissioned by the Digital Library
Federation and the Council on Library and Information Resources: "A
Kaleidoscope of Digital American Literature" (2005)
http://purl.org/dlf/pubs/dlf104/ and "A Survey of Digital Library
Aggregation Services" (2003) http://purl.org/dlf/pubs/dlf101/.   

The Digital Library Federation, founded in 1995, is a partnership
organization of 40 academic libraries and related organizations that are
pioneering the use of electronic-information technologies to extend
their collections and services. DLF provides leadership for libraries by
identifying standards and best practices for digital collections and
network access, coordinating research and development in the libraries'
use of technology, and incubating projects and services that libraries
need but cannot develop individually http://www.diglib.org/.