The BCDL Steering Committee met on June 23 via teleconference. A key discussion included the next phase of the BCDL project. The initial phase focused on providing a demo of the BCDL to gain momentum - the demo was successfully presented at the BC Library Conference in May. It was agreed that Fall 2017 is an opportune time to enter a new phase and engage in a business analysis of the BCDL initiative. A business analysis could provide specificity on the hub and spoke design within the BC context. It is expected to lay the foundation for the work of future subcommittees regarding metadata and sustainability, to name a few. Developments are underway to secure funding and a scope of work definition for this next phase.

Steering Committee terms of reference, membership, and minutes can be found at

http://bcdigilib.ca/Steering-Committee

Members of the Admin team will join with OurDigitalWorld staff to present at the Ontario Library Association Super Conference this January in Toronto. The session will outline the process that lead to the collaboration across the country on a common platform to deliver digitized content for the citizens of BC and Ontario using a unified infrastructure. As budgets and funding sources are diminishing, but delivery expectations are rising, developing large scale initiatives across sectors, and in this case across provinces, has become critical to their success.

If you are attending Super Conference 2018, please look for the BCDL session!

BC Library Conference, April 21, 2017

Speakers from the GLAM sectors outlined the value of digital collections to record intellectual, historical and cultural record. The audience heard from museums, archives, public libraries and post secondary libraries. Dan Sifton, BCDL technical lead, provided a showcase of the technical infrastructure supporting the BCDL initiative. Sandra Singh,the inaugural Chair of the National Heritage Digitization Strategy, reported on the national initiative and it's alignment with the BCDL.

BC Studies Conference, May 4-6, 2017

A poster session at the BC Studies conference provided a technology update, guiding principles review, and a timeline on the initiative to date.

The poster was met with great interest from attendees.

BC Studies Poster

 

Joint Conference on Digital Libraries

Toronto, June 19-23, 2017

Technology lead Dan Sifton, and his counterpart at OurDigitalWorld (Ontario) Matt Barry presented their work on the BCDL and OurDigitalWorld infrastructure at the Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL). JCDL is a major international forum that focuses on digital libraries and associated technical, practical, and social issues. 

Matt and Dan were able to showcase their cloud-based docker instance of Supplejack. Supplejack is the metadata aggregator developed and used by Digital NZ and being looked at as the platform of choice for the development of the British Columbia Digital Library, as well a possible replacement for the aging technology used by Our Digital World (OurOntario).  They were able to show how they had harvested and ingested metadata from both the BC and the Ontario jurisdictions in a variety of schemas and formats, from IRs at GLAM institutions and even places like YouTube.  They also showed how they had parsed out the harvested content to display through three separate Ember.js front ends: one for ON, one for BC, and one that does both- that's impressive!  Coupled with the architecture above this allows for the implementation of a shared Supplejack instance, either on a large scale (i.e. cross provincial) or a smaller scale (shared hub instances in a single province).

JCDL Poster