What is the “Golden State Digital Network” (GSDN)?

The Golden State Digital Network (GSDN) is a collaborative information-sharing and referral network of organizations that provide free, cost-recovery, or grant-subsidized digital collections services to California libraries, archives, museums and other cultural heritage institutions. GSDN supports the lifecycle management of and broad public access to unique digital collections by coordinating established infrastructure and leveraging the unique expertise of organizations statewide.

Why do we need the GSDN?

Within California, no single organization provides comprehensive, collection lifecycle management services. Instead, we have a diverse ecosystem of distributed organizations – operating within a generally under-resourced environment – that partner with individual cultural heritage organizations (typically within a regional area), and offer varying levels of services and support. The criteria and eligibility for use of services vary – e.g., based on location, topical scope or format of the collection, etc. Until the GSDN was established, service organizations lacked a peer-to-peer network for support, referrals, and cross-sharing information and cultural heritage institutions had no ready way to identify entities offering specific services.

Who does GSDN serve and how?

The GSDN directly benefits organizations providing digital collections services through:

  • Matchmaking and referral pipeline: By gaining a stronger and continually refreshed understanding of each other's services, organizations are better equipped to advise cultural heritage organizations -- and refer where appropriate.
  • Service coordination and alignment: The GSDN illuminates where services closely intersect with, complement, or duplicate each other, thereby revealing critical service gaps and opportunities for efficiencies.
  • Information sharing: Through greater awareness of peer offerings, service organizations are individually well positioned to share and adhere to existing best practices, and collectively extend and establish standards when needed. When organizations formulate and develop new services, they can do so with an understanding of how they most effectively fit into the broader landscape.

The GSDN ultimately supports California libraries, archives, museums and other cultural heritage institutions by providing access to a holistic set of services to support the lifecycle management of their collections.

What kinds of service providers are members of GSDN?

We welcome the participation of California-based non-profit organizations that are currently providing free, cost-recovery, or grant-subsidized services to libraries, archives, museums and other cultural heritage institutions within the state, supporting the lifecycle management and broad public access to unique digital collections.

What are the costs of joining GSDN as a service provider?

The GSDN has no participation costs or other fees, but members are expected to designate a representative who will:

  • Attend quarterly meetings.
  • Maintain a current profile of service offerings on the GSDN website.
  • Respond to requests for information about services, received via the GSDN website.
  • Follow generally accepted best practices for shareable metadata, content creation, and/or digital preservation.
  • Share publicly-available collections with CDL and DPLA (If providing collection hosting or aggregation services).
  • Provide 90 days notification to CDL if no longer able to provide services via GSDN.

What is the CDL’s role? How does GSDN relate to the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)?

The CDL convenes the GSDN (organizes meetings, maintains communications list and website, etc.), and also functions as a Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) Service Hub. As a DPLA Service Hub, the CDL serves as conduit for aggregating digital collections from service organizations (as well as individual institutions) into DPLA, via its Calisphere platform.

California Revealed is a California State Library initiative to help California’s public libraries, in partnership with other local heritage groups, digitize, preserve, and serve online historically significant Californiana (e.g., books, documents, audiovisual recordings).

California Revealed provides a robust, digitization-to-access approach to assisting libraries and local heritage groups with stewarding their digital collections. California Revealed intersects with organizations represented within the GSDN in two primary ways:

  • Collections created through California Revealed are harvested by CDL for exposure through Calisphere and DPLA.
  • Organizations represented within the GSDN are well-situated to advise those libraries in their local area and facilitate participation in California Revealed, when a complete pipeline of services is optimal.

Interested in participating in GSDN? Contact us for more information