Press: “What Should a Digital Public Library of America Look Like?”

“The public library may be one of this nation’s most important cultural and civic institutions. Yet it faces a number of threats – budget crises at the state and local level and the shift in the publishing industry from print to digital books. Of course, the library is more than just a repository for books – paper or otherwise. And even as libraries move to embrace more digital content, the local library will (hopefully) persist as a community center and as a portal to Internet resources.

“But efforts are underway to create a DIgital Public Library of America, an online library . The project’s steering committee have announced a ‘beta sprint,’ asking people to weigh in on what they think this library should look like. Librarians, archivists, developers, and the general public have been asked to contribute ‘ideas, models, prototypes, technical tools, user interfaces,’ and so on to the project, helping design how the DPLA might index and provide access to the digital content.”

From Audrey Watter’s article on Read Write Web, “What Should a Digital Public Library of American Look Like?”