Recommitting to DPLA’s Mission in 2025

Last week, DPLA held our inaugural new year kickoff meeting. Over 100 people joined us to begin what promises to be a significant year for all of our work. 

Our goal was to review the progress we made in 2024, and to invite people to be part of launching the next phase of our work together.

As a reminder, last year, we conducted an assessment of our signature digital cultural heritage aggregation program. We heard two things: a desire to grow and expand our collective work, and the need for a sustainable long-term home beyond that which a small organization can provide. In the spring, we began the process to identify a vibrant and durable structure for our digital cultural heritage aggregation program. At the same time, we set a target of raising $5 million to help launch that work in its next phase. We’re finalizing the details of these partnership and funding opportunities and will have more details to share in the spring.

In the meantime, we’re excited to announce some of our new initiatives for 2025, and to invite you to take part:

1. Grant fund: Aimed at providing needed support to our hub network, our new grant fund will support projects that strengthen and accelerate the work of the DPLA Network. This could include addressing needs for curation and harvesting tools to bring new collections to the DPLA catalog. We are forming a grants committee to work with us to develop the criteria and call for proposals, as well as help us review applications. If you are interested in advocating for the future direction of cultural heritage aggregation, please let us know here.
2. DPLAfest: We’re bringing back DPLAfest, our in-person gathering of our community, this  fall. And planning has already begun. We invite those excited about coming together to help us build connections to join the Fest planning committee, and be part of helping us determine a location and crafting programming. Sign-up to join the planning committee here.
3. DPLA’s Network Council: We’re seeking members interested in serving in key leadership roles. To learn more about what we’re looking for and volunteer, read the application form, or reach out to Dominic or our current Network Council Chair Maggie Snow.

Lastly, we invite you to join us for our first Open Board + Community meeting of the year, March 20th at 1pm ET, when we’ll share updates on the work outlined above, among other things.

Amid all these new activities, we will continue to maintain the core work of providing reliable aggregation services to our partners. You can find our ingest schedule here and, as always, can join Dominic and Michael in their regular office hours. The next one is Tuesday, Feb. 11 at 2pm ET.

Again, if you are interested in any of these opportunities to be part of the future of DPLA, please let us know with this application form. And feel free to pass these opportunities on to others you think would be interested in joining this new phase with us. We would like to start this work soon, so please respond by February 2!

Happy New Year and thank you, as always and especially now, for your partnership,

The DPLA Team