DPLA Press Roundup: June 21, 2013
HathiTrust Doubles DPLA Collection with More Than Three Million Books
“The HathiTrust Digital Library will become The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)’s single largest content hub, the two institutions announced on June 18. The metadata records associated with some 3,384,638 volumes (and growing daily) held by the HathiTrust will be accessible on the web at dp.la, and through the DPLA application programming interface (API). (The digitized volumes themselves will continue to reside in HathiTrust.)”
From Meredith Schwartz’s article in Library Journal, HathiTrust Double DPLA Collection with More Than Three Million Books
DPLA and HathiTrust Launch Partnership
“Yesterday the Digital Public Library of America launched a partnership with HathiTrust, marrying the preservation mission of one with the access strengths of the other. The partnership will have the DPLA—itself only a couple of months post-launch—employ HathiTrust’s metadata to improve discoverability of and access to that content in HathiTrust that is in the public domain or otherwise freely available. HathiTrust’s own discovery and access platform will continue to develop as well. As has been noted previously here and elsewhere, HathiTrust preserves a fair amount of content useful for legal research.”
From Kim Nayyer’s post on Slaw, DPLA and HathiTrust Launch Partnership
Tech Revamps in Prolific Places: Touch Screens in Museums, Libraries with APIs
“In April 2013, the Digital Public Library of America was officially opened. The entirety of archives from multiple universities, museums and libraries across the country have been digitized and made available through the website: www.dp.la. Not only has the project opened access to a trove of information to the public, but the development team also created an API available to app developers. On the main page of the website, there is an apps section which features apps for searching through the plethora of information in the libraries’ records. Such incorporation of technology to expand upon the already rich value of such an institution is a perfect example of how technology can expand upon something that is already great. As a technology company, it is difficult to walk the line between preservation of an institution’s historical identity, and the desire to update the experience for future generations. Thankfully, technology has the ability to open up access and widen the audience for institutions, historical or contemporary.”
From Himanshu Sareen’s post on Wired: Innovation Insights, Tech Revamps in Prolific Places: Touch Screens in Museums, Libraries with APIs
Recent NEH/DFG Digital Humanities Awards and the Future of Autonomous Projects
“As the process of text encoding becomes more standardized, it would be interesting to see the development of a digital library that could incorporate these autonomous projects into one central location. This may allow for the continued development of autonomous projects whose dwindling funding limits the participation of its original developers. To be sure, there are obstacles to such grand collaborative work, and, ironically, this sort of project may need to begin as an autonomous project. However, the recent launch of the Digital Public Library of America provides a substantial step toward the further development of a central digital library of various digital materials, and may itself be the very project I would like to see.”
From Justin White’s post on the Yale Instructional Technical Group blog, Recent NEH/DFG Digital Humanities Awards and the Future of Autonomous Projects