One Step Closer to a New Home for America’s Digital Heritage

Last month, DPLA began a search to select a vibrant and durable home for our flagship cultural heritage aggregation program. Our deadline for the first round of expressions of interest was Tuesday, and we are so appreciative of and encouraged by the responses we received. We are grateful for everyone who has reached out to us, for the work put into so many thoughtful applications and questions, and for the support of our community to get us to this point. We received a number of promising submissions, which are already allowing us to imagine an even more dynamic and sustainable future for this work than we’d previously thought possible.

We are now embarking on the next phase in this process, as DPLA begins to evaluate the candidates that have stepped forward. As we’ve been speaking with interested institutions, we’ve also been forming a steering committee, drafting a Request for Proposals, and finalizing the cultural program assessment’s final report, all of which we will be sharing over the next few weeks. We will begin to evaluate proposals in next month, and plan to reach a decision by July and will make an announcement about the new home sometime after that. (If you would like more information on the process, please view the recording of last month’s DPLA Open Board + Community meeting.)

We want to again share our gratitude to everyone for being part of this journey with us. If you have questions about our plan, the coming transition, or our aggregation work more generally, please reach out directly to Dominic Byrd-McDevitt, DPLA’s Director of Community Engagement, or feel free to attend his next office hours on May 14 at 2pm ET.