DIVERSITY & DISSENT FUND: CIVIL SOCIETY IN 20TH CENTURY AMERICA

FUNDING LIBRARIES

You can view the organizations and libraries that have contributed to the Diversity & Dissent Fund here.

OVERVIEW

Reveal Digital’s Diversity & Dissent Fund allows libraries and archives to connect scholars to primary source content free from expensive paywalls. We work with the cultural heritage community to create large and impactful digital collections at dramatically lower investment levels than offered by traditional publishing models.

MAKE A FUNDING COMMITMENT

This inaugural digitization fund will invest in projects that embody the civil society: those non-governmental/non-commercial organizations that helped shape and guide America through two world wars, promoted equality across gender and race, campaigned for worker rights, and voiced alternative social views that challenged and ultimately changed societal norms. Our focus will be on 20th-century America, with the liberty to extend the range based on the unique scope of each funded project.

Please contact Peggy Glahn to make a funding commitment. Contribution rates are determined by library type. See the table in the Funding Tiers section below to determine your institution’s contribution level

HOW IT WORKS

Libraries commit to making multi-year contributions to a common pool to create large aggregated digital collections that support the thematic focus of Diversity & Dissent in 20th-Century America.

Reveal Digital develops collections from content contributed by special collections libraries, historical archives, and other cultural institutions. We provide copyright clearance support where needed to secure open access rights. Source libraries receive complete digital files of their content (images and metadata with searchable text) to do with what they wish.

PROJECT SELECTION AND DEVELOPMENT

Project selection decisions are made at the direction of an editorial board composed of representatives from funding libraries. Each year, the editorial board selects an area of focus under the broad theme of Diversity & Dissent. The theme selection process begins with funding libraries. Funding libraries propose potential themes and vote on the pool of suggestions. The editorial board uses the funding libraries prioritization to make the final determination of each year’s thematic focus area.

When the theme is finalized, Reveal Digital identifies content for inclusion and pursues sourcing agreements with the holding institutions. Funding libraries are also eligible to nominate content from their own holdings, if they are not specifically targeted for inclusion.The resulting collections reflect a broad diversity of perspectives.

Reveal Digital develops detailed cost models for every new project. The cost model establishes a budget for all project costs, including sourcing, rights clearance, conversion, hosting, and digital preservation. The editorial board meets periodically to track progress and resolve issues.

Each project has a common set of conversion standards, ensuring that all the digital collections produced by Reveal Digital will be cross-searchable and accessible for data mining. Reveal Digital collections are currently hosted on the Veridian platform, but we plan to migrate them to the JSTOR platform in 2020, where they will also be cross-searchable with JSTOR content and discoverable by scholars, faculty, and students worldwide.

The 2019/20 theme is Student Activism on Campus. 
The 2020/21 theme is American Prison Newspapers. 

GOVERNANCE

Reveal Digital is directed with the assistance of an executive committee. Members of the Executive Committee are asked to serve two-year terms. New members are selected by the Executive Committee from a pool of candidates proposed by Sustaining libraries. Sustaining libraries will also be canvassed to identify candidates for the Editorial Board associated with each investment fund. The Editorial Board will refine the scope of its investment fund and review/recommend projects for funding and support.

Reveal Digital’s editorial board is composed primarily of special collections and subject liaison librarians from Sustaining libraries. Editorial Board members are asked to serve two-year terms. The Editorial Board guides the collection development process and advises Reveal Digital on user-related issues.

FUNDING TIERS

For the initial five-year funding period, participating libraries will be asked to make non-binding commitments for annual contributions to the Diversity & Dissent Fund at the suggested levels shown below. These funding levels are tiered based on library type.

Libraries able to make a funding commitment at or above the suggested level will be Sustaining Members, while libraries who want to support open access publishing but are unable to invest at the suggested levels will be Contributing Members.

INVESTMENT LEVELS

Libraries may invest in the fund at one of two levels, Sustaining or Contributing. Sustaining and Contributing libraries receive a unique set of benefits associated with their level of funding support.

Sustaining Members – invest at or above the suggested funding level

• Exclusive access to new collections as they are being built. All collections will be made open access upon completion
• Ability to propose and vote on yearly themes to help direct how the library’s investment is used
• Opportunity to contribute content to new collections
• Eligibility to participate in Reveal Digital’s governance through our Executive Committee and working groups
• Eligibility for library staff and campus faculty to help shape Reveal Digital’s publishing agenda through participation on our Editorial Board
• Enhanced level of support through the provision of usage statistics and MARC records
• Unlimited text downloads of digital collections at no cost to the Funding Library

Contributing Members – invest below the suggested funding level

• Ability to propose and vote on yearly themes to help direct how the library’s investment is used
• Exclusive access to new collections as they are being built
• Enhanced level of support through the provision of usage statistics and MARC records
• Text and data mining requests (for a fee)

PROJECTED FUND VALUE AND EXPENSES

The total value of the fund over the initial five-year period is forecasted to be $4,404,000. The chart below displays the breakdown of the fund between fixed cost items over that five-year period and the amount of the fund that will be available for digitization projects. By year five, nearly two-thirds of the annual fund value will be available for project-based investments.

Five-Year Cumulative Fund Expenses, 2017-2021