Applications open to find a new home for America’s digital heritage

Following up on what we shared last week—that DPLA is launching a search for the next home of our cultural heritage aggregation program—I am excited to announce that we are now accepting expressions of interest, which you can submit via this form. In the time I have spent immersing myself in the DPLA network, I have learned that aggregation remains an important piece of the work libraries do to enable discovery of the record of our past. That work is more important than ever with the shifting technological landscape and other challenges faced by memory institutions. This open call is the first step in a process to identify a healthy long-term home for this work. In parallel, we are in the process of raising a fund that will support this work in its new home, and we will share more in future updates.

Our goal is to identify a new home for America’s cultural heritage that will have organizational experience with both cultural heritage and collaborative projects; technical acumen and capacity; a demonstrated commitment to building a more equitable society; and the ability to support and sustain this work for the long term.

If you think your organization (or group of organizations working together) is interested in exploring being this home, we are eager to hear from you via this form by the end of April. If you have any questions about this process, check out our FAQ, and please send any additional questions about this process my way. And, if you would like to schedule time with me to learn more, you can schedule a meeting here.

We expect for the new home to be in place in the first quarter of 2025. In order to reach that goal, we will need to inform our funding partners of the selected new home by July. Because of this tight timeline we have structured our process in two stages. We are asking interested organizations, or consortia, to submit an “expression of interest” by April 30th. We will ask a number of candidates to participate in a more in-depth RFP process on May 13; those responses will be due by June 11th. 

Thank you for your support, we look forward to hearing from you—again, feel free to schedule time with me, or reach out to me directly at dominic@dp.la.