Acquisitions: Reveal Digital Joins ITHAKA Family

Here’s the full text of the ITHAKA acquisition announcement. Emphasis ours.

Reveal Digital announced today it has joined ITHAKA, the not-for-profit home of JSTOR, Portico, Artstor and Ithaka S+R. As part of ITHAKA, Reveal Digital will continue to provide an open access publishing model for special collections where libraries drive the program.

Reveal Digital uses a unique library crowd-funded model to support the development of open digital collections. In partnership with libraries, Reveal Digital raises funds to digitize, clear rights and make available special collections that have been aggregated from universities and other institutions.

Reveal Digital founder, Jeff Moyer, is excited about the opportunities presented by becoming part of the ITHAKA family. “In many ways ITHAKA is the perfect home for Reveal Digital. Its entire organization is aligned around its mission of expanding access to knowledge and using digital media and technology to enhance scholarship and teaching. Their resources and expertise will allow us to significantly grow our open access digital publishing programs and to bring more content to more readers in ever more exciting ways.”

ITHAKA is strongly committed to continuing Reveal Digital’s mission to work in partnership with libraries to develop open access digital collections that provide valuable content for scholarly inquiry. “Libraries hold incredibly rich special collections that are critically important to scholars. ITHAKA, and JSTOR in particular, have been exploring ways of helping libraries expand the reach and impact of their special collections. This alliance with Reveal Digital will enable us to work together to identify, digitize, disseminate, and preserve a growing number of these collections, helping make the unique collections held by institutions available to researchers around the world.” said Laura Brown, ITHAKA Executive Vice President and JSTOR Managing Director.

Reveal Digital’s publishing program will continue to be led by Jeff Moyer and Peggy Glahn as head of library outreach. It will be guided by its Executive Committee and Editorial Board, both of which are composed of librarians from institutions that invest in Reveal Digital’s programs. All funding libraries will continue to have a voice in proposing and selecting new projects.

Executive Committee member Mark Stover, Library Dean, California State University, Northridge said, “I am very pleased that Reveal Digital is now part of the ITHAKA family. Reveal Digital has a strong record of funding the digitization of archival collections and rare newspaper collections, which eventually become open access. ITHAKA, with its respected place in the academic world and beyond, will enable Reveal Digital to have an even broader platform to provide students, faculty, and the worldwide community access to rich and relevant collections of historical primary sources.”

Ivy Anderson, Associate Executive Director and Director of Collection Development and Management, California Digital Library, and a member of JSTOR’s Library Advisory Group praised the move. “The partnership between ITHAKA and Reveal Digital is nothing short of inspired. Both organizations are united by their deep engagement with libraries and their unwavering commitment to the scholarly enterprise. Marrying Reveal Digital’s expertise in primary source digitization and curation with the complementary collections of JSTOR and the reach and capacity of ITHAKA offers a wonderful example of the potential of libraries and information providers to work together on community-led initiatives to enhance the open dissemination of scholarly resources.”

Reveal Digital will operate as a ITHAKA subsidiary.

MSU Special Collections and Reveal Digital

Collections Now in Development

• KKK Newspapers
• Civil Society In 20th Century America

Resources and Background

Reveal Digital’s Independent Voices Collection (an Open Access Resource)
The collection become open to all users last May.

Independent Voices is an open access digital collection of alternative press newspapers, magazines and journals, drawn from the special collections of participating libraries. These periodicals were produced by feminists, dissident GIs, campus radicals, Native Americans, anti-war activists, Black Power advocates, Hispanics, LGBT activists, the extreme right-wing press and alternative literary magazines during the latter half of the 20th century.

From 2017: Academic Libraries Contribute $1.794M to Fund Open Access Collection

From 2014: Reveal Digital Unveils a New Business Model for 21st Century Archives by Tom Gilson, Against the Grain

From 2014: Reveal Digital Launches New Library Crowdfunding Sitefor Open-Access Digital Collections

Filed under: Academic Libraries, Archives and Special Collections, Associations and Organizations, Digital Collections, Digital Preservation, Funding, Interactive Tools, Libraries, Management and Leadership, Maps, News, Open Access, Patrons and Users, Publishing