Press: “The Digital Public Library of America: Why Library and Information Students Should Care”

“Why Should LIS Students Care?

“We should care because it exciting!  It is an ambitious undertaking that goes outside a traditional (or grossly outdated) model of what libraries should do with their collections and is redefining our role in society to some extent.  The world is online and our documents are increasingly born digital.  Current and future generations will seek digital materials, and have higher expectations when it comes to accessibility of information because of Google and Wikipedia.  Libraries can adapt to this change in information consumption.  Google, while it tries, cannot guarantee the caliber of high quality information that a library can. I agree with Martin Gomez when he argued that the DPLA can achieve what Google cannot through connecting the digital assets of libraries online.  It is incredible to think of the potential impact in making the collective knowledge and research of major universities libraries and the digitized cultural collections of public libraries, universally accessible to all American citizens online.”

From Dorotea Szkolar’s post on Syracuse University School of Information Studies’ Information Space blog, The Digital Public Library of America: Why Library and Information Science Students Should Care