{"id":6539,"date":"2013-01-10T13:29:48","date_gmt":"2013-01-10T18:29:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/?p=6539"},"modified":"2013-01-16T15:45:45","modified_gmt":"2013-01-16T20:45:45","slug":"meet-the-hubs-digital-commonwealth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/2013\/01\/10\/meet-the-hubs-digital-commonwealth\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Hubs! : Digital Commonwealth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the next few weeks, I will be exploring the collections of the DPLA\u2019s seven Digital Service Hubs<\/a> — looking for hidden treasures and getting to know our Hubs a bit better. For the first of this series of posts, we’ll be starting right here in Massachusetts with the Digital Commonwealth of Massachusetts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Digital Commonwealth is a state-wide repository service with 75 partner organizations throughout Massachusetts. Members contribute their holdings, for which Digital Commonwealth provides scanning and metadata consultation services; digitized materials and indexed metadata are hosted through Digital Commonwealth\u2019s web portal. Currently, Digital Commonwealth\u2019s repository includes over 1,500 books and serial volumes and over 25,000 individual items. Digital Commonwealth began in 2007, and signed\u00a0 a letter of agreement creating a partnership with the Boston Public Library (BPL) in 2011. Under this agreement, Digital Commonwealth is largely responsible for outreach activities, while the BPL has taken the lead on the partnership\u2019s technological infrastructure, which includes scanning facilities located at the BPL.<\/p>\n

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Bowling Pin Setters (Francesek \u201cFrank\u201d Jarosz b: 7 Oct 1899, MA Joseph Philippe b: 9 Jan 1899, Lowell, MA William Francis Payton b: 11 Feb 1900, Lowell, MA d: 24 Aug 1970, Lowell, MA) by Lewis Hine<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Among Digital Commonwealth\u2019s current highlights on its homepage is an early twentieth-century photograph of textile workers by Lewis Hines, the official photographer of the National Child Labor Commission from 1908-1918. Digital Commonwealth provides a link to collection of Hines\u2019s photos<\/a>\u00a0at\u00a0the Center for Lowell History at the University of Massachusetts Lowell\u00a0. One of my favorite images in the collection is an image of three very young bowling pin setters smiling outside of the bowling alley where they work (above).<\/p>\n

Also on Digital Commonwealth\u2019s homepage is a link to NOBLE Digital Heritage<\/a>, the digital library of the North of Boston Library Exchange, Inc.. NOBLE consists of ten libraries, including the Oliver Wendell Holmes Library at Phillips Academy, Andover. Through the NOBLE portal, I found a 1930 hand-drawn map<\/a> of Phillips Academy\u2019s Cochran Bird Sanctuary (below). I’m especially fond of the fluttering scrolls drawn on to the map, which bear the names of buildings around the school’s campus.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Cochran Bird Sanctuary Map by Richmond Knapp Fletcher, 1930<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Digital Commonwealth contains an extensive collections tree listing the contents of a number of rich collections, from the\u00a0exhibitions files<\/a>\u00a0of the Clark Art Institute Library\u00a0to the\u00a0oral history projects<\/a>\u00a0of the Jewish Women\u2019s Archive. In searching through the contents of the WGBH Open Vault, I found a 30+ minute long video and transcript of a\u00a01982 interview with John Kerry<\/a>\u00a0about his experience in the Vietnam war.<\/p>\n

Of the items I found browsing Digital Commonwealth, I think my favorite is a 1932 typed copy of the original rules of volleyball<\/a>. According to the Springfield College Digital Collections, the organization that holds the copy, volleyball was invented by William Morgan, Springfield class of 1894 and physical director of the YMCA in Holyoke, MA, \u201cas a less strenuous alternative to basketball for middle-aged business men.”\u00a0Springfield\u2019s copy also contains a handwritten note: \u201cPlease Keep, Last Copy.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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The Original Rules of Volleyball by William Morgan, 1932. Provided courtesy of Springfield College, Babson Library, Archives and Special Collections<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

Featured Image courtesy\u00a0of Springfield College, Babson Library, Archives and Special Collections.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first post in a series exploring the collections of the DPLA\u2019s seven service hubs\u2014looking for hidden treasures and getting to know our hubs a bit better. This week, we investigate Digital Commonwealth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5325,"featured_media":6547,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[923,2236],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-featured"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/files\/2013\/01\/volleyball.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5325"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6539"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6628,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6539\/revisions\/6628"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}