Registry of Digital Masters 

The Digital Library Foundation/OCLC Registry of Digital Masters provides a central place for library staff to search for and find digitally preserved materials. As such, the Registry broadens access to your organization’s publicly available digital books and journals.The DLF and OCLC developed the Registry, which functions as a subset of WorldCat.

To be included in the Registry, an item must appear in a digital format.Typical items include monographs and serials. A registered object ensures that the digital object (or soon to be digitized) followed established standards and best practices for digitization and that the institution that digitized it has made a commitment to digital preservation of this object.

Guidelines for best practices

The Registry of Digital Masters is a joint DLF/OCLC venture. Members of both the DLF and OCLC are helping to establish best practices. Based on DLF functional requirements for both digitally reformatted and borndigital materials, guidelines for creating or editing records are available, providing Registry elements mapped to MARC 21 elements, a few examples, a glossary and a "cheat sheet" of minimal requirements needed to create a Registry record. Learn more about the development of the Registry of Digital Masters at www.diglib.org/collections/reg/reg.htm

Benefits of the Registry

Adding records to the Registry of Digital Masters provides:

• easier access to digital or to-be-digitized materials for staff
• the ability to find digital materials that are available elsewhere
• assurance that you may not need to digitize certain materials (if they are already in the Registry, you save resources and can direct your efforts to other materials)

The Registry of Digital Masters also provides you with information about:

• digital or to-be-digitized materials
• the level at which materials have been digitized; is it adequate enough that another digital copy is not required?
• the institution responsible for the digitization.

How to find Registry records

Search WorldCat (through PiCarta, FirstSearch or Connexion) to find digital items in the DLF/OCLC Registry. Public access to the Registry will be available later in 2005 through the Digital Library Federation.

Benefits of the Registry

Adding records to the Registry of Digital Masters provides:

• easier access to digital or to-be-digitized materials for staff
• the ability to find digital materials that are available elsewhere
• assurance that you may not need to digitize certain materials (if they are already in the Registry, you save resources and can direct your efforts to other materials) Registry metadata in the WorldCat record will tell you:
• that a preservation master exists
• that a use copy is available and accessible
• which institution digitized or intends to digitize it
• the level at which the material has been digitized
• the technical standards applied to the digitization process.

When to use the Registry

Similar to a microform master, a master copy of a digital object serves as the preservation copy from which use or access copies may be made. Metadata may be used to describe both the master and use copy on the same record. A use copy of every registered object needs to be available, but not necessarily free-of-charge.

The following table describes the type of item available and whether to include that type of item in the Registry or not:

Type of item	Inclusion in the registry
Master only	Yes, if you indicate that you are willing to allow an access surrogate to be created.
Use copy only	No, a bibliographic record may not be within the subset that represents the Registry, but may be in WorldCat.
Master/use copy	Yes, may reside in the Registry.
No master/no use copy	No, may not reside in the Registry.

Before you begin

Before beginning work with the Registry of Digital Masters, you must make some decisions about the standards you will use to digitize materials.Whatever choices you make - whether for a project, collection or a general policy for digitization at your institution - you should document them and make them accessible for Registry records.

The following resources on the Digital Library Federation Web site will help guide you in the decision-making process:

• Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials Provides direction for identifying and building consensus around minimum characteristics.
  www.diglib.org/standards/bmarkfin.htm
• Registry of Digital Reproductions of Paper-based Monographs and Serials Functional Requirements Specifies detail for digital reproductions of monographs and serials.
  www.diglib.org/collections/reg/regpapfunc.htm
• Registry of Archival Masters of Digital Monographs and Serials Functional Requirements Specifies detail for born digital monographs and serials.
  www.diglib.org/collections/reg/regdigfunc.htm
• Registry of Digital Masters Record Creation Guidelines Includes a summary of MARC 21 elements that satisfy Registry of Digital Masters elements. www.diglib.org/collections/reg/DigRegGuide.htm

For more information

Contact OCLC PICA at birmingham@oclcpica.org or to learn more about the DLF/OCLC Registry of Digital Masters go to www.oclc.org/digitalpreservation/why/digitalregistry/ .