Contribute Your Collections
Depending on the needs and capabilities of the partner institution, materials can be made available on the publicly accessible Digital Commonwealth website as hosted or harvested collections:
- Hosted Collections: This option is for institutions that would like to contribute materials but do not have their own digital repository system.
- Harvested Collections: This option is for institutions that host their digital collections in their own digital repository system and can make their metadata records available via OAI-PMH harvesting.
For information about what types of content may be contributed, see the Collection Development Policy.
To request to have your materials hosted or harvested by Digital Commonwealth, please complete the "Boston Public Library/Digital Commonwealth Digitization Request Form and Service Agreement."
BPL maintains a digital repository system that can host digital objects along with their corresponding metadata records. This service is open to any Massachusetts-based library, museum, historical society, archives, or other cultural heritage institution and is intended to provide a digital object management solution for institutions that lack the infrastructure to host and/or provide access to their own digital collections.
To have your materials hosted in BPL’s digital repository system, they must meet the criteria outlined in the Collection Development Policy and be accompanied by acceptable metadata records. BPL will review your materials after you submit your request. If they are not in a repository-ready format, or if your institution has not yet created metadata records for your items, BPL may be able to offer options for metadata editing, crosswalking, and/or creation.
All items hosted in the digital repository system are accessible in the public search interface. Additionally, metadata records for the items will be harvested into the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). Please note that all metadata records held in the repository and harvested into DPLA will be made available under a Creative Commons CC0 license.