DPLA’s Network Council is the representative body for DPLA’s members. As cultural heritage workers and digital library practitioners, we recognize the deficits in the ways our profession has documented Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, the LGBTQ community, and others whose voices have been drowned out by those with more power or organizational standing.

At DPLA our mission is to ensure equitable access to knowledge for all. Central to that mission is our commitment to ensuring that everyone’s stories are told.

This month, we at DPLA were thrilled to welcome 10 new members to our Curation Corps of volunteer librarians/curators: Dorothy Berry, Digital Collections Program Manager, Houghton Library, Harvard University Cynthia Bower, Former Federal/Government Docs Librarian, University of Arizona Carady DeSimone, Sunshine State Digital Network Metadata Group Michele Huie, Systems and Cataloging Librarian, Santa Clara County […]

All of us at Digital Public Library of America have been outraged and saddened by the tragic killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Tony McDade, and David McAtee. As an organization, we believe that it is our responsibility to reject racism and reiterate our commitment not only to free access to knowledge, but […]

It’s hard to believe it’s been more than two months since much of the country moved to remote work, and we first shared some tips that have helped make our team successful while being spread out across the country.

Earlier this month, the DPLA ebooks team met virtually with state librarians from across the country as part of the annual spring COSLA members’ meeting.

We’ve been hearing from public libraries and others around the country who are recommending DPLA to their patrons and communities for free access to cultural heritage artifacts, ebooks, and educational and genealogical resources.

At the beginning of April, DPLA established a 90-day plan that has and will continue to guide our work during this unprecedented time. With May already upon us, we wanted to take a moment to update you on our progress.

The entire DPLA team would like to extend our gratitude to the 100+ members of our community who joined us on Tuesday for our open board meeting. We send special thanks to Katie McCormick of Florida State University and the Sunshine State Digital Network; Mark Smith, Director and Librarian at the Texas State Library and […]

As many of you know, in December 2019, DPLA announced a new project, supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, to make it easier to incorporate artifacts from DPLA’s partner institutions into Wikimedia Commons. We believe this is an exciting opportunity for our partners to boost visibility and usage via inclusion in Wikipedia articles. We […]

DPLA’s core mission is to make knowledge freely accessible to all, and that mission has never been more important than during the current crisis. As we announced last week in our 90-day plan, we are redoubling our efforts in service of that mission, and that includes working to get more books into the hands of more libraries and more library patrons.

We hope you’ll join us next Tuesday, April 14th, at 1:30 pm ET for our open board call.

Over the last few weeks, the DPLA team has been, like all of you, striving to adapt to our new reality while also checking in on family, friends and colleagues. We’ve been grateful to hear from many of you not only about the new challenges you’re facing, but about how our community is coming together in new ways to meet this moment and forge a way forward.

Dear Friends of DPLA,  I wanted to give you an update on our work at the Digital Public Library of America during these uneasy and rapidly changing times.  The DPLA was conceived of nine and a half years ago out of a notion that knowledge would increasingly be produced, shared and consumed digitally, and that […]

Like you, we are practicing social distancing and doing our best to flatten the curve, while also juggling all sorts of new challenges that have come along with the spread of COVID-19. We have been amazed and humbled to see how our community has come together, and we send our best wishes to everyone who has been affected in various ways by this crisis.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is pleased to announce that we have published a free, easy-to-read epub version of New York City’s Internet Master Plan. The plan, which aims to bring affordable, high-speed internet access to all five boroughs of New York City, was released in January. Previously, it was available only in pdf format.


The DPLA team has been working remotely since about 2017. We work together daily from our homes and offices across the country–South Carolina, Colorado, Illinois, Georgia, Montana, Massachusetts, Michigan–and for us, this distributed work environment makes sense, as our work involves bringing together the riches of America’s library into one central, but completely virtual, repository. […]

At DPLA, ebook services are core to our commitment to a library-led digital future. And as we head to Nashville for PLA2020 this week, our ebooks team has been hard at work growing our ebooks offering, collaborating with state and public libraries on the adoption of Library Simplified and building new strategic partnerships.   We’re excited […]

The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation today announced a $750,000 investment in the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) to create a national cohort of public library leaders and technologists. The group will work together to help advance libraries’ use of digital technologies.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is pleased to announce the release of a new ebook, The Impeachment Papers, a compendium of 38 documents related to the impeachment of Donald J. Trump.