Patricia Maus discusses her experiences at the University of Minnesota Duluth as a contributing institution to the Minnesota Digital Library and the DPLA.

In April 2014, after research and planning, the Public Library Partnerships Project team started to convene one-day workshops for public librarians interested in digitization. Each hub—Digital Commonwealth, Digital Library of Georgia, Minnesota Digital Library, and Mountain West Digital Library—gave a workshop in the spring. We then met as group to discuss the curriculum and make necessary changes for the later workshops. We also relied on feedback from participants in the first workshops and the survey and informal feedback they had offered about their experiences. Since that meeting, we’ve continue to give workshops: so far eight more with an additional five scheduled through the end of September.

Stephen Zietz is the Head of Special Collections and Archives at Georgia State University. The department has a staff of six professional librarian/archivists and four paraprofessionals and is distributed across campus in five locations. Over the last six years, Special Collections and Archives has expanded it collections scope and reenergized its oral history program.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) announced today that it has received $300,000 from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation as part of its Knight News Challenge, an open contest seeking ideas that strengthen the Internet for free expression and innovation.

The following guest blog post is by Chelcie Rowell, Digital Initiatives Librarian at Wake Forest University’s Z. Smith Reynolds (ZSR) Library. Twenty-eight collections from ZSR’s WakeSpace Digital Collections appear in the DPLA via the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center Service Hub.

The George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida (UF) have partnered with DPLA by contributing more than 390,000 items, including antique maps, rare books, manuscripts, photographs, oral histories, newspapers, and research publications. All will become accessible to DPLA’s global audience of students, teachers, scholars, developers, and the public.

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the launch of the Digital Public Library of America (http://dp.la), a groundbreaking all-digital library that brings together millions of items from America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. In celebration, DPLA is proud to announce the addition of five major new partners and other significant milestones that attest to the tremendous momentum the project has as it enters its second year.

It’s hard to believe that a year has already gone by since our launch last April. It’s been a whirlwind here in the Boston headquarters of DPLA, and across DPLA’s ever-expanding national network of libraries, archives, museums, and cultural heritage sites. The surging numbers in our collection—6.7 million items from over 1300 contributing institutions, up from 2.4 million and 500 a year ago—attest to the tremendous momentum we’ve achieved.

The U.S. Copyright Office has asked for comments on a proposed new right for copyright holders, the “making available” right, which would restrict the ability to link to content the open web. With the help of DPLA Legal Committee member Dave Hansen, Dan Cohen filed a response.

Last month I had the pleasure of traveling to the Nantucket Historical Association (NHA) in Nantucket, Massachusetts for an archival site visit with the good folks from the Boston Public Library’s (BPL) digital services department and the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center. We were there to meet with NHA staff and survey the 120 year-old island historical association’s collection of historical maps…

We are often asked about our metadata application profile (called the DPLA MAP) and the metadata “requirements” for participation in DPLA. In response, we released a new document, “An Introduction to the DPLA metadata model,” which offers a detailed introduction to the DPLA MAP, describes how we harvest metadata, and outlines the types of metadata that our partners provide us.

Recently, DPLA teamed up with our colleagues and friends at Europeana and Kennisland to promote global interoperability of our metadata, and specifically our Rights Statement fields. In October 2013, Europeana and the DPLA organized a first joint rights management workshop to explore this possibility in Boston.

With generous funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the DPLA is working on the Public Library Partnerships Project, in collaboration with Service Hubs and their local public libraries, that offers digital skills training to public librarians. Project manager Franky Abbott gives an update on current project work and future goals.

This post explores the diversity of groups represented in DPLA’s collections and partnerships.

One key aspect that makes the DPLA model so unique is its aggregation of data—making a one-stop shop for users to access millions of items from our service partners, representing collections nationwide. That network of partners is continually growing. Just this past October, the DPLA was pleased to add The Portal to Texas History into that community, bringing in more than 300,000 new items.

Now, thanks in part to the DPLA, more visitors are accessing the MWDL’s collections than ever before. From the April 18, 2013 launch of the DPLA through the middle of November, the number of visits to the MWDL website has increased by more than 105% in comparison to the previous seven months, from 41,500 to 85,000 visits.

The Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO), which administers the Empire State Digital Network (ESDN), the DPLA Service Hub in New York, is seeking an experienced manager to coordinate and manage its hub-related activities.

A November 2013 post from Dan Cohen’s personal blog.

We thought the DPLA community might be interested in a few stats we’ve gathered about our partners and their collections at the six-month mark. We’re still building, growing, and testing, but the numbers give some insight into where we’re content-rich and where we might consider focusing our development efforts.

The DPLA model revolves around collaborating with many partners who contribute content and metadata to the DPLA—and, as a result, users, libraries and public institutions across the country. The DPLA is continually adding new service partners and extending our reach in establishing a fully representative, national network. This past October, the DPLA welcomed the North Carolina Digital Heritage Network (NCDHN) into its community of partners and users—adding more than 123,000 items into our collection.