Development of the Missouri hub: preparing for linked open data by contributing to the digital public library of America

Linked data presents numerous implementation challenges in cultural heritage institutions. The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) has emerged as a resource for cultural heritage institutions to contribute metadata records for their digital assets to a national aggregation platform, one that is actively being developed to express contributed metadata as linked data. At present, there is a dearth of literature on the DPLA, and especially on its hubs. This poster aims to fill that gap by documenting the formation of the Missouri Hub, the DPLA Service Hub for Missouri, as a model for institutions with similar collective goals of exposing and enriching their data through the DPLA. Using Rogers's (2003) Diffusion of innovations theory, we apply a post-implementation descriptive application of Rogers's model for the innovation process in an organization to the formation of the Missouri Hub. The five steps to implementation are presented, including the initiation and decision process. This poster presents and analyzes one approach to adopting and implementing the DPLA, an innovation supporting cultural heritage institutions and their goals of exposing and enriching their data. By working collaboratively, the institutions were able to achieve a goal that they could not attain individually.