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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). ########### 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/.