Here you can find information about:
If you have additional questions or need more information, please contact OPAL Support.
As of July 2020, participation is aligned with the term of the OPAL Service Agreement and costs are incorporated into the participants' overall OPAL fees. As such, the commitment to participate runs through the end of the Service Agreement period. Libraries may join the OPAL CONTENTdm at any point in the middle of the Service Agreement period with the commitment to continue through June 30, 2023.
Libraries opting to participate share the costs of subscription based on the amount of storage needed, as outlined below.
Storage | Annual Cost |
---|---|
10 GB | $300 |
40 GB | $1,200 |
120 GB | $3,600 |
Additional increments of 40 GB | $1,200 ea |
Once you're ready to begin, we will need the following information to set-up your institution in the OPAL Digital Collections on CONTENTdm.
After the information is received at opalhelp@ohionet.org we will create your account(s) and CONTENTdm web site pages, and will send you details for how to access them. We will also provide you with the license key for the Project Client. Log in to the CONTENTdm Administration Tool https://server17342.contentdm.oclc.org/ with your OCLC username and password to approve and index collections, manage metadata, and make edits (depending on permissions).
To contribute content to your Collections, you will need to download the current Project Client for CONTENTdm. This is the staging area where you prepare, describe and load batches of content (including compound objects). There is a 2GB limit for single, digital files in Project Client.
1. Contact Name
2. Institution Details
3. Collection Name & Information
Collection name(s) need to include the institution name and cannot be more than 80 characters, including spaces. The collection name cannot include any of the following characters: \ / : * ? " < > | For example:
a. The relationship between the collection and the institution
b. Source of the original items
c. Purpose of the collection
4. Metadata (informational - no special steps required)
Institutions control their own metadata. Generally, the simplified Dublin Core metadata option is sufficient. At a minimum, you should include Title, Collection, Language, Rights, and Type metadata for each object. We also encourage member libraries to keep the ODN-DPLA metadata profile in mind when selecting a metadata profile and/or creating your own. Additional suggestions:
5. Customization Options
6. Special Instructions
7. Training
We recommend OCLC’s CONTENTdm Basic Skills Training Series for anyone who will be working with the platform and adding content https://help.oclc.org/Metadata_Services/CONTENTdm/CONTENTdm_training
While we are not able to provide customized training support for CONTENTdm, we can connect you with other OPAL institutions (for mentoring) who have similar collections.
Some notes about file size restrictions:
OPAL has decided NOT to use OCLC's OCR, mostly because it's so much more expensive ($320-ish per year, per license-no ability to share among institutions). Instead, most OPAL libraries are using other tools to do the OCR. Bluffton is using ABBYY FineReader ($199, one time) and Walsh is using one of their campus Adobe licenses. Several institutions have reported that ABBYY FineReader does a much better job with OCR on some projects than Adobe.
When you use your own OCR, you capture your image externally using whatever tool and then process it with ABBYY or Adobe and then import into CONTENTdm. Here’s the process Carrie uses at Bluffton: