Getting it Right at LibTech 2017

On Thursday, March 16^th Minnesota Digital Library (MDL) staff Molly Huber and Greta Bahnemann were joined by Associate University Librarian for Data and Technology John Butler and University Copyright Program Librarian Nancy Sims in a presentation called “It’s Time: Getting it Right on Rights” at the 2017 LibTech Conference at Macalester College in St. Paul.

The well-attended presentation addressed the groundswell of rights standardization projects that are arising out of the push by the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) to standardize rights statements across the millions of items accessible through their website. DPLA is building on the efforts of their counterpart in Europe, Europeana, to standardize rights statements in their collections for greater accuracy and searchability, and DPLA hopes to achieve the same, working through their hubs and contributors. The twelve standard statements themselves were created by a grant-funded group tasked with crafting a set of statements to cover the various copyright scenarios institutions might find in the materials they hold. In the presentation, Butler provided background on MDL, DPLA and the genesis of the movement overall, while Sims talked about the copyright statements and their intent. Bahnemann spoke about how the statements might be implemented in metadata and Huber wrapped up by sharing the progress of the MDL’s local rights standardization pilot project, which launched in early 2017. The audience had many questions and the discussion was lively. The slides from the presentation are available here. To learn more about the statements themselves visit rightsstatements.org.