DPLA Press Roundup: September 13, 2013
CHOICE Review of the Digital Public Library of America
“[Visited Jun’13] The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) aims to become a national portal to the digital holdings of archives, libraries, museums, and cultural institutions in the United States. Currently the site has partnered with some of the largest digital repositories, including ARTstor (CH, Sep’13, 51-0013), the Smithsonian Institution (e.g., Collections SearchCenter, CH, Aug’13, 50-6488), the Internet Archive (CH, Jun’13, 50-5327), and the National Archives and Records Administration (CH, Sep’06, 44-0382). The service launched in early 2013 with over 2.4 million records that link to digitized copies of books, manuscripts, photos, and videos. This free site allows users to browse featured exhibitions or search by place, date, or subject. Search results may be refined by format, home institution, date, location, language, and subject. Visitors may also explore their results as a physical map or as a time line. The site offers software developers different ways to access and parse records in order to create new avenues of discoverability. In keeping with current intellectual property guidelines, copyrighted material from member institutions is protected. This prevents access to some material that is available on-site. Resources on the national level are well represented, but outside of some large state universities local repositories are lacking. Overall, a common portal for researchers and students represents an improvement over searching individual archives. This site can only become more useful as smaller institutions add material. Summing Up: Essential. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers.”
From J. Rodzvilla’s article in the September 2013 edition of CHOICE magazine, Choice Review of the Digital Public Library of America
OER, Kindergarten Assessments
“The second announcement led me to an interesting discovery. The University of Southern California (USC) has contributed more than 250,000 items from its own digital library to the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). The DPLA was launched in April. It offers a single point of access to millions of items-photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more-from libraries, archives, and museums around the United States. Users can browse and search the DPLA’s collections by timeline, map, format, and topic; save items to customized lists; and share their lists with others. Users can also explore digital exhibitions curated by the DPLA’s content partners and staff. The DPLA does not actually hold physical copies of objects in its database. Instead it contains metadata records. Each record links to the original object on the content provider’s website. Not everything in the DPLA is OER. Many items are in the public domain, but the copyright status of items varies. Information about individual items rights can be checked in Rights field in the metadata record. There are 2.8 million objects in the DPLA collection. Through its Digital Hubs program, the DPLA is working to establish a national network out of the over 40 state/regional digital libraries (Service Hubs) and myriad large digital libraries (Content Hubs) in the US. Service Hubs aggregate data on behalf of a given state or region; Content Hubs are large digital libraries, museums, archives, or repositories that maintain a one-to-one relationship with the DPLA. In total, the DPLA has more than 450 partners through the Hubs Program. An open API allows independent development of applications, tools, and resources that make use of data contained in the DPLA platform.”
From Anne Wujcik’s post on EdNET Insight, OER, Kindergarten Assessments
The Digital Public Library of America—Investigating American Diversity
“I found this fascinating photograph of a sewing class at the Jerome Relocation Camp for Japanese Americans in Arkansas by typing ‘sewing pattern’ into the search engine of the Digital Public Library of America. This recent venture aims to collect the digital resources of libraries and archives across the United States. Although coverage is still spotty, it is an adventure to test the site’s resources. It includes not only photographs of people, but also pictures of artifacts, books scans, and even video clips. The DPLA site will take you back to the sites of the sponsoring institutions. My investigative searches brought up all kinds of resources I had not known about, including the Digital Library of Georgia, which has a wonderful photo series called ‘Vanishing Georgia.'”
From Lynn Mally’s post on American Age Fashion, The Digital Public Library of America — Investigating American Diversity