DPLA Press Roundup: October 19-31, 2013
Congratulations to the Digital Public Library of America
“What happens when archives, libraries and museums come together? They build something amazing. The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is here, and the National Archives is proud to participate as a leading content provider in this exciting online portal and platform. The DPLA provides a single online access point for anyone, anywhere to search and access digital collections containing America’s cultural, historical and scientific heritage. Following the successful launch in April 2013, DPLA continues to grow, regularly bringing in new partners and content. For the latest news, check out DPLAfest 2013, happening right now in Boston! This large-scale collaborative effort to create a universal digital public library has united leaders and educators from various government agencies, libraries, archives and museums. Together with several large content providers, such as the New York Public Library, the Smithsonian, and Harvard University, the National Archives is sharing content from our online catalog in the DPLA.”
From a post by David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, on the AOTUS blog, Congratulations to the Digital Public Library of America
Libraries swapping stacks for bytes
“The digitization of collections from American libraries, archives, and museums took center stage at Blackman Auditorium last week, when Northeastern co- hosted the inaugural DPLAfest to recognize the Digital Public Library of America. DPLAfest was co- hosted by the DPLA, the Boston Public Library, the College of Social Sciences and Humanities, and Simmons College’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science. Launched in April, DPLA strives to bring digitized versions of collections from universities (including Northeastern), libraries, and public organizations to the masses in a single online portal. To date, the online library has digitized 5 million books, works of art, and records of America’s heritage from 1,100 institutions across the country.”
From Joe O’Connell’s post news@Northeastern, Libraries swapping stacks for bytes
National digital library gains traction
“For a 6-month-old, the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) already has grown quite large: from an initial 2.4 million available items in April to more than 5 million. Fame came fast too, ‘even in our infancy,’ said DPLA Executive Director Dan Cohen. This free online portal into American culture was less than three weeks old when Time magazine named it one of the best 50 websites of the year. DPLA is an enormous free public library under a digital roof. With a few clicks of computer keys, users can access millions of links to online books, photographs, movies, and other cultural artifacts from collaborating institutions, including digital collections at the Harvard Library. Member libraries, museums, and exhibits contribute links for digitized materials — ‘metadata’ — to nine regional or state aggregators, called service hubs. Twelve such contributors, each with 250,000 items or more, are content hubs that provide metadata directly to DPLA, which is a metadata repository rather than a repository of images, books, or any other physical content.”
From Corydon Ireland’s article in the Harvard Gazette, National digital library gains traction
A Report from DPLAFest
“As Lincoln [Mullen] noted in that earlier piece, the DPLA’s official launch event was delayed due to the bombings at the Boston Marathon, which happened, quite literally, on the street outside the DPLA’s offices in the Boston Public Library. Last Friday I was fortunate to attend the rescheduled DPLAFest launch event, which was co-hosted by Northeastern University—my home institution—and Simmons College. There were a number of exciting DPLA announcements made at DPLAFest, most of which signaled the enormous progress the project has made in the few months since its April launch online. Here are some of the announcements I suspect will be of most interest to ProfHacker readers…”
From Ryan Cordell’s post on ProfHacker, A Report from DPLAFest
Metadata for #Good — the Digital Public Library of America
“Libraries are core institutions of communities, of societies, of democracies. I had the great pleasure of spending the last two days at a festival hosted by the Digital Public Library of America (dp.la) – one of the many efforts that I see as being at the very heart of digital civil society. What is dp.la? There’s an official mission statement – written 3 years ago by 40 people and still going strong today. Here’s some of what I’m thinking as I wait to go home:
- It’s a portal, a platform and principle –
- It’s a set of community tools for making library and curated community content (Americana) from across the country findable and visible, for free, everywhere, by anyone.
- It’s civil society designed from the data up. And it’s all about the people.
- It’s a way for people to build tools that matter to them
- It’s metadata used for good…”
From Lucy Berholz’s post on Philanthropy 2173, Metadata for #Good — the Digital Public Library of America
Digital Stewardship and the Digital Public Library of America’s Approach: An Interview with Emily Gore
“I love all the energy around the project and that a lot of people are excited about it and want to contribute. One of the first projects I coordinated was with a local farm museum, dealing with the actual museum objects, and marrying those with the rich text materials we had in the library’s special collections. And telling a whole story — people being able to actually see those museum objects described in that text. I just saw the power of that kind of collaboration from early on and what it could be more than just kind of a static, each-one-of-us-building-our-own-little-online-presence. The concept of the DPLA has really been a dream for me, to take these collaborations that have been built on the statewide, regional and organizational levels and expand them.”
From Trevor Owens’ interview with DPLA Director for Content Emily Gore on the Library of Congress’ The Signal: Digital Preservation, Digital Stewardship and the Digital Public Library of America’s Approach: An Interview with Emily Gore
DPLA Adds Three New Service Hubs and Launches Super Cool Ebook Bookshelf
“Here are two announcements from the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) coming out of the DPLAfest underway in Boston. Congrats to Dan Cohen and the DPLA team as well as to the team at the Harvard Library Innovation Lab…Super Cool! DPLA Launches E-Book Bookshelf Tool…Over 1 million books are available via the bookshelf. Browsing and serendipity still have roles in resource discovery and this new tool is a real-world example of what’s being done to make browsing more relevant and useful in the digital world. The DPLA Bookshelf was developed by the Harvard Library Innovation Lab and based on the Stack View project that allows users to browse bib records of items found in the stacks of the Harvard Library.”
From Gary Price’s post on InfoDocket, DPLA Adds Three New Service Hubs and Launches Super Cool Ebook Bookshelf
The Digital Public Library Of America: Promoting Literacy & Cultural Preservation
“Do you have fond memories of going to your local library to do research on a school assignment? Or just to pass the time, browsing through old books, photo archives and other fascinating materials? You can explore similar (or in some cases, the very same) archives online without leaving the house, thanks to the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). The DPLA is an extensive and entirely free online collection of books, photographs, manuscripts, moving images, and other quality content from a network of libraries, museums, archives, and institutions across the United States. According to The Atlantic, the DPLA is the result over two years’ work on the part of 42 of the nation’s top libraries and research organizations. Its website features scanned and otherwise digitized materials from such content hubs as the Smithsonian, the New York Public Library, Harvard, the National Archives, and the University of Virginia, just to name a few. It also brings content from digital libraries across America — including the Digital Library of Georgia, Minnesota Digital Library, and Mountain West Digital Library — into one point of access for users.”
From the article on TeachThought, The Digital Public Library of America: Promoting Literacy & Cultural Preservation
THATCamp brings scholars, professors to Storrs
“Last Saturday, scholars, professors and students from throughout New England took part in UConn’s first official THATCamp. The Humanities and Technologies Camp, or THATCamp for short, has seen it’s fourth successful year as a new way to conduct scholarly meetings and lectures. The event began last Friday with a keynote speech by Dan Cohen, Founding Executive Director of the Digital Public Library of America and one of the creators of THATCamp. However, the actual ‘unconference’ portion of the event took place the following Saturday. The ‘unconference’ is a unique aspect of THATCamp that separates it from a typical scholarly lecture. The process begins with some preliminary ideas for discussions, but discussion ideas can be endorsed the day of as well. Those ideas are written on sticky notes and displayed on windows, and the “campers,” or attendees of the event, can vote on what discussions they would like to see held that day.”
From Alban Murtishi’s article in The Daily Campus, THATCamp brings scholars, professors to Storrs