Metadata provision and standards development at the Collaborative Digitization Program (CDP): A History

What began in 1998 as the Colorado Digitization Project is now known as the Collaborative Digitization Program (CDP), or CDP@BCR. The CDP’s Heritage West database represents not only the primary product of the organization, but also one of the oldest continuously-operating collaborative repositories of cultural heritage metadata in the country. As a basis for the author’s forthcoming quantitative and qualitative analysis of Dublin Core metadata in Heritage West, the following article offers a history of how the CDP has, over time, organized and managed the metadata provision for its digitization projects.