Digital Collections (CONTENTdm)Updated: January 13, 2026
This page serves as a central location for all of CARLI's information and documentation relating to DPLA, the IDHH, and best practices that CARLI libraries can use to improve their digital collections' metadata records.
See all DPLA has to offer from their main DPLA page or view only the IDHH collections.
Overview
In 2015, the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) added the Illinois Digital Heritage Hub (IDHH) to their organization to serve as the DPLA Service Hub for the state of Illinois. The IDHH was originally a partnership between the Illinois State Library (ISL), Chicago Public Library (CPL), CARLI, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). DPLA Service Hubs "...are state or regional collaborations that aggregate metadata from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions.
"Service hubs provide DPLA with their partners' unique metadata records that resolve to digital objects (online texts, photographs, manuscript material, artwork, etc.) through a single data feed, such as OAI-PMH. They serve as the point of contact for the maintenance and enhancement of metadata records." (from the DPLA Prospective Hubs webpage)
Currently, the IDHH is funded by a grant from the ISL that supports a Project Coordinator position at CARLI. The IDHH provides:
- Oversight and project management for the IDHH
- Metadata best practices and remediation
- A single point of metadata aggregation via the Combine server hosted by CARLI
- Marketing and outreach for current and future partners
Collections that are part of CARLI Digital Collections are automatically included in DPLA if the IDHH has received the proper permissions from a collection's owning library. If you have collections that are not part of CARLI Digital Collections and are interested in learning how you can participate in DPLA, please please email the CARLI Office.
Metadata Best Practices for Shareable Records
Metadata best practices
Shareable metadata best practices documentation: Metadata Resources for Contributors.
IDHH metadata workshops are typically available as asynchronous webinars. If your institution is interested in hosting or participating in an in-person workshop for contributing institutions in your area, please email the CARLI Office.
Rights statement recommendations for collections harvested by DPLA
DPLA encourages the use of standardized rights statements for items they harvest. To learn more about CARLI's recommendations on how to use these standardized rights statements in your collections, please visit Using Rightsstatements.org for DPLA Collections.
A note on copyright: The copyright holder is not necessarily the institution that provides access to the resource, similarly digitization by the owner is not a significant enough transformation to legally justify a new copyright status for the digitized resource.When attributing a rights statement, it is recommended that the statement on an item be clear as to how a user can interact with the resource (use, permissions, reproductions, etc.) and if the statement is describing the original or digital item.
Sending restricted Images to DPLA when metadata is still viewable
The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) regularly harvests collections from CARLI Digital Collections (CDC). As part of their rules, the DPLA does not allow any items with usage restrictions to be harvested—in CONTENTdm that means if an item is restricted to an IP address/range or to a specific user name. If a collection has any items with usage restrictions on them, the DPLA will refuse to harvest the entire collection.
The process CARLI uses to send metadata to DPLA automatically filters out items where BOTH the item AND its metadata are restricted. However, if you have item(s) in your collection where ONLY the image is restricted and end-users are allowed to view the item’s metadata, please see this page on our website for steps you need to take so CARLI can filter out the image-restricted items.
Metadata case studies from the CARLI Created Content Committee
The CARLI Created Content Committee was inspired by the addition of Illinois as a DPLA Service Hub to look at what it means to share metadata and create shareable metadata. As part of that effort, we are sharing these case studies written by members of the committee on projects we have worked on involving the migration or sharing of metadata. The case studies hope to illustrate the importance of good metadata and to help others to learn from our mistakes. There were four case studies conducted throughout 2016-2017.
Case Study 1: Data Dictionary by Matthew Short, Metadata Librarian, Northern Illinois University
Shareable metadata webinars
PDA Event: Metadata in Digital Content: A Look at Shareable Metadata in Aggregation Services; webinar presented by Megan Pearson, July 30, 2024
Megan Pearson, Project Coordinator for the Illinois Digital Heritage Hub (IDHH), shares her experience with aggregating metadata and working with metadata created by other institutions, including standardization practices and methods used by the IDHH, and offer some thoughts on how to create shareable metadata across environments. (55 minutes)
IDHH Usage Statistics from DPLA
Archived 2017-2023 DPLA Usage Reports
These historical reports were generated by Google Analytics and include information such as total Illinois items viewed, top events by contributing institution, and top events by item title.
Historical DPLA Usage Statistics Reports
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