From: Rick Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2015 02:31:58 +0000

> I'm very intrigued by the post from Rick Anderson. Why abbreviate the paragraph on the DPLA document like that?

Because the only part of the paragraph I had a question about was the
part that talked about IR content.

> The intent of DPLA is to uncover "hidden" digital assets which may not otherwise gain ready findability on a commercial search engine like Google(tm).

DPLA describes its mission in a much more nuanced way than that:
“(DPLA) brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives,
and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. It strives
to contain the full breadth of human expression, from the written
word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage,
to the efforts and data of science. DPLA aims to expand this crucial
realm of openly available materials, and make those riches more easily
discovered and more widely usable and used.” (http://dp.la/info/) It
sounds to me like DPLA’s mission isn’t focused specifically on
“hidden” digital assets, but more like it’s about making content that
is already publicly available more easily found and used. Maybe that’s
potato, potahto. Both goals are admirable and important, of course.

> Instead of seeing this as a slight, librarians should see their work with making content discoverable through their institutional repositories as being readily "found" and to use a phrase Mr. Anderson is fond of: "good enough."

I agree. So it sounds like my subject line (which was intended as a
humorous reference to an old newspaper joke, see here for more info)
came across as critical rather than funny. That was my own clumsiness,
for which I apologize. I truly intended no criticism of DPLA; I was
just looking for answers to questions raised at my institution.

---
Rick Anderson
Assoc. Dean for Collections & Scholarly Communication
Marriott Library, University of Utah
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