Digital Public Library of America receives $81,000 from the Whiting Foundation to research educational uses of its growing collection
BOSTON — The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is pleased to announce that it has received an $81,000 grant from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation to explore educational possibilities for its growing collection. The grant will allow DPLA to convene in-person meetings for educators from a wide variety of institutions, including K-12 schools, community colleges, small liberal arts colleges, and research universities, this fall in Boston. The purpose of these meetings will be to define what DPLA and other large-scale digital collections can do to better adapt their resources to address educational needs at the secondary and college level.
Furthermore, DPLA staff will talk virtually with other instructors and providers of online content as part of this learning process, resulting in a white paper that will help DPLA outline an educational strategy. This report should also prove useful to other online collections looking to make their materials more useful in the classroom. From this research, DPLA will move forward with a comprehensive educational plan.
“We’ve had a great first year aggregating openly available content from across the United States,” noted Dan Cohen, DPLA Executive Director, “and even though there is much left to do on that front, we are now beginning to turn toward the maximal use of our collection as well. We are so appreciative of the Whiting Foundation’s generous support, and look forward to seeing what students and instructors do with these materials, and how we can better enable those uses.”
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About DPLA
The Digital Public Library of America (http://dp.la) strives to contain the full breadth of human expression, from the written word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage, to the efforts and data of science. Since launching in April 2013, it has aggregated over 7 million items from over 1,300 institutions. The DPLA is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit.
About the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation
The Whiting Foundation (www.whitingfoundation.org) has supported scholars and writers for more than forty years. This grant is part of the Foundation’s efforts to infuse the humanities into American public culture.
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