The Louisiana Digital Library (LDL) is an online platform for libraries, museums, archives, and historical organizations across the state. The books, manuscripts, oral histories, maps, and photographs held in the LDL showcase the cultural resources of Louisiana.
The metadata about these items is also a great asset. When explored in their entirety, the data held in the LDL is as valuable as the digital facsimiles. This talk will explore the LDL as a data hub, a place to gather and share the metadata of the participating institutions. Open data is a growing trend in archives and special collections, enabling new types of interactions with collection material. We will contextualize the field of open data in historical institutions, and explore uses for downloaded metadata from the LDL
