Through the Library for the Commonwealth program of the Boston Public Library, a variety of digitization services are available free of charge. These services will support Digital Commonwealth's goal to make cultural heritage materials held by Massachusetts libraries, museums, historical societies, and archives widely available online.


WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE YOU SUBMIT YOUR REQUEST
(Once you've read the information below, click the "Next" button to access the application.)

Preference will be given to institutions that have not yet used the Boston Public Library's digitization services in a given fiscal year.

To accommodate as many requests as possible, the number of items that we can digitize per institution per year may be limited. You may include as many items as you wish in the application form but, in general, we are expecting to limit each institution to ~5,000 individual items from no more than 5 distinct collections or ~50 bound volumes (or ~15,000 bound pages) of production per year. This number will be adjusted based on the number of applications received.

Metadata harvesting requests will be accommodated on a first-come-first-served basis and will be fulfilled as quickly as possible in conjunction with the repository development schedule.

The Boston Public Library cannot currently digitize microforms, roll film, audio, video, or newspapers. We encourage you to include these formats in your application, however, so that we may evaluate which services to provide, if possible, in the future.

Any institution applying for digitization services must agree to make the digitized materials available online, either through direct ingest into the Digital Commonwealth repository system or via metadata harvesting into that system.

Any institution applying for digitization services must agree to make the metadata for the digitized or harvested items available under a Creative Commons 0 license. The terms of this license can be found here: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/.

Upon request, digital files can delivered to applicants via portable hard drives. Some types of files may be made available via HTTP download links.

You will receive a follow-up call or email from a Boston Public Library representative once we have determined what the next best steps for the proposed project.

More information about our program can be found here: https://www.bpl.org/digitization/ 

Although not required for the commencement of services, membership in Digital Commonwealth is highly encouraged as a way to build support for the organization and its affiliated programs. Information about Digital Commonwealth membership fees, rights, and responsibilities can be found here: https://membership.digitalcommonwealth.org