MANAGING THE DIGITAL GEOLOGIC PUBLICATION LIFECYCLE WITH DIGITAL COMMONS: A PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN THE MAINE GEOLOGICAL SURVEY AND THE MAINE STATE LIBRARY

State geological surveys and other public institutions often struggle with long-term access to digital information, both in terms of discovery and persistent web addresses. Many have developed custom web interfaces to their digital collections, often with limited search capabilities, but are challenged to maintain them in the ever-changing digital environment within scarce human and financial resources. To address these problems, the Maine Geological Survey (MGS) has partnered with the Maine State Library (MSL) on a unique project. The MSL is using a relatively new, cloud-based tool called Digital Commons to host and manage state agency digital documents (http://digitalmaine.com/). MGS has loaded all of our digitally available maps and reports (~2600 items) into this system. The tool offers perma-links for MGS maps and reports, management and maintenance of the PDF files themselves, simple and advanced search capabilities, elimination of storage costs, integration with ArcGIS Online and Server, and it removes the need for MGS to build and maintain custom front-ends on our web site for document management. Through Digital Commons, discovery of MGS documents has been greatly enhanced by their inclusion in the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). Prior to the launch of DPLA in 2013, a person interested in searching the collections of the Library of Congress, Smithsonian Institution, and National Archives had to search three different portals to find historical content. DPLA has created the umbrella that makes all kinds of digital collections searchable in one place. DPLA does not host digital content, it only indexes the descriptive metadata associated with those items and points users to the repository where the content is stored. Other uses for the Digital Commons include archiving and geotagging digital photos and scanned photo slide collections, and to archive historical spatial datasets. Digital Commons is available to any teaching, research, library or government organization.