A Wikimedia project update, upcoming events, hub network news, and more

The Digital Public Library of America brings together resources and collections from institutions across the country, all on one easily accessible platform. Because of this, DPLA has the ability to inform people about little-known collections and resources as well help coordinate and model best practices in the library/archives field with regard to our DEI values, descriptive standards, and ethical issues pertaining to rights and intellectual property.

Join us on Friday, January 15, 2021, at 2 pm ET for our next Community + Open Board meeting. We’ll be hosting Reckoning with Our Pasts and Building Our Futures, a community conversation about the work to be done to live up to our common commitments to equity and inclusion in 2021 and beyond, as […]

Last week DPLA hosted our first (virtual) holiday reception. It was a risk– none of us had ever been to a virtual holiday reception before, and we weren’t sure exactly what we would do, or even if anyone would come. But with the encouragement of some of our friends (thanks, Keila!), we took that risk, and ended up with a gathering of more than 40 public librarians, college and middle school educators, technologists and funders. We were joined by DPLA founders, longtime collaborators, and people whom we only met this year. I was reminded of the value of taking risks; the collective effort that is DPLA is itself a risk. And I was struck, as I have been so many times this year, by the breadth, dedication, and resilience of the extended DPLA community. With that in mind, I wanted to reflect on some of our achievements this year.

As we look back on the ups and downs of our own year at DPLA, we wanted to share with you some information about how the 1.5 million people who visited dp.la this year used our resources:

On Thursday, October 29, 2020, from 2 – 3:30 pm ET, DPLA will host a virtual event, the latest in our series of programming related to Black women and activism, in collaboration with the Charlotte Mecklenburg Library.

Many of us are feeling a mix of anger, rage, sadness, and fear this fall, particularly this week in the wake of Kentucky authorities’ refusal to hold to account the police officers who killed Breonna Taylor. At the Digital Public Library of America we have been reflecting on our roles and responsibilities. We were founded, 10 years ago next week, with a mission to ensure equitable access to digital knowledge, and at this moment we feel an added urgency to make certain that our deeds align with our stated aims.

The DPLA Assessment Working Group invites all DPLA member hub representatives to a member webinar, Guide to Analytics, on Wednesday, September 23, at 1:30 pm ET.

Last week’s event—Race, Gender, Politics, and History: Reconstructing Visibility of Black Women’s Activism—was the best-attended webinar in DPLA’s history. We’d like to thank everyone who joined us for five informative and thought-provoking presentations by people and organizations at the forefront of the work to lift up and celebrate Black women’s contributions to not only the suffrage movement but the history of protest and activism in the United States.

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) today announced a set of partnerships with the Atlanta University Center Robert W. Woodruff Library; Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture in Charleston, South Carolina; Tuskegee University; the Amistad Research Center at Tulane University; and Southern California Library to collaborate on the creation of a national digital collection that highlights the roles and experiences of Black women in the women’s suffrage movement, as well as Black women’s history of activism, as part of the centennial celebration of the passage of the 19th Amendment.

All of us at DPLA send a big thank you to everyone who attended our Community + Open Board Meeting on Friday, and a special thanks to Tracie Hall, John Palfrey, and Felton Thomas for an inspiring and thought-provoking conversation about equity, access, and the future of reading. In case you missed it, a recording is now available.

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.

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.

Digital Library of Tennessee has a new search and discovery interface providing a single point of access for Tennessee’s digital materials.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is pleased to announce a new $622,000 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support strengthening and expanding its national cultural heritage network and platform.

We are pleased to welcome Vermont’s Green Mountain Digital Archive as the newest DPLA Service Hub. Green Mountain Digital Archive’s 57,000 items include local and regional history alongside materials that are national and global in scope.

We are excited to announce that over 75,000 new items from Connecticut Digital Archive are now discoverable in DPLA. Connecticut Digital Archive, a program of the University of Connecticut Library, includes a diverse array of materials from over forty cultural heritage institutions across the state.

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new service hub, Digital Virginias, with over 58,000 items now discoverable in DPLA.

After a successful and rewarding inaugural year, we are thrilled to kick off a new membership year, welcoming new and returning Member Hubs for continued collaboration on our shared priorities and goals.

We are pleased to announce two upcoming webinars in our Member Webinar Series: Grantseeking for Digital Libraries, offered in partnership with the Foundation Center, and Easier Metadata Aggregation with the Michigan Service Hub’s Combine.