We can’t wait to see you at ALA Annual 2019 in Washington, DC! We’ll be unveiling our new strategy, announcing new projects, and presenting alongside partners on expanding access to digital content.

Re-cap what we heard or review what you missed at DPLAfest 2019 with this one-stop guide to the news, notes, and other materials shared during the conference.

With DPLAfest 2019 less than two months away, we are thrilled to reveal the full program of sessions, lightning talks, and roundtable discussions.

DPLA staff are headed to Seattle for the American Library Association Midwinter Conference and look forward to connecting with partners, friends, and colleagues. Here’s the rundown on where to find DPLA staff at and around the conference. See you in Seattle!

International gif-making competition GIF IT UP returns for the month of October. Join the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) and partners Europeana, Trove (Australia), and DigitalNZ (New Zealand) to create original gif artwork, be inspired by creative reuse of cultural heritage materials, and celebrate one of the internet’s most beloved art forms.

The next DPLAfest and DPLA Network Day will take place at Chicago Public Library’s Harold Washington Library Center.

DPLA staff are headed to the Big Easy this week for the American Library Association Annual Conference and we look forward to connecting with the broad and diverse library community. We’ll be sharing updates on our work around ebooks in four great sessions, connecting with friends and partners across the library community, exploring creative models for engagement between libraries and non-profits, and much more.

One of the core goals for the new membership program is to strengthen our partnerships and give our Hubs more of a voice within our partner network and on our work at DPLA, so we are excited to share perspectives on our recent meeting directly from some of our members. Hear from guest authors Emily Pfotenhauer, Lauren Algee, and Pamela Wright on their experiences and insights about the recent Members Meeting.

DPLA hosted our inaugural Hub Network Members Meeting on March 13-14, 2018, a gathering of representatives from our Member Hubs to map out ways that we—DPLA and our network of partners—can exchange ideas and work together to tackle common challenges, achieve shared goals, and shape the future of DPLA. We are pleased to share the happenings, ideas, and outcomes from the Members Meeting with our broad community.

A summary report from “Past, Present, and Future of the Digital Public Library of America,” an event held at Harvard University on February 2. The event focused on the founding values of DPLA—a commitment to free, open access to knowledge for all—and how the vision for, and work of, DPLA intersects with the mandates, challenges, and opportunities facing libraries across the country in today’s media and information landscape.

Held at the Colorado Convention Center, the Public Library Association’s 2016 Conference empowered attendees with the tools to return to their library and “Make It Extraordinary.” As the Digital Public Library of America, DPLA is utilizing its national network of libraries and cultural heritage institutions to explore how it can help improve the state of library ebooks.

Four DPLA staff members recently attended LDCX at Stanford University. The annual conference is a chance for those in the library, archive, and museum (LAM) communities who work with technology to collaborate on solutions to common problems.

In my social media feeds yesterday, I saw some friends and acquaintances say that they were reconsidering their attendance at DPLAfest, scheduled to be held in Indianapolis, IN, April 17-18, in light of the recent signing of SEA 101, or the “Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” into law by Governor Pence of Indiana. I must admit that as an openly gay employee at DPLA, I had an immediate and strong negative reaction. I was unhappy about my organization spending money in a place that would allow businesses not to serve me simply because I am gay. However, after more thought and a night of sleep, I have come to a different conclusion. The passing of this law should make us all want to attend DPLAfest even more than we might have before.

Thanks to all of you who attended our webinar. We had a great turnout and hope you found it interesting and informative. As promised, you can now find the video for our recent Metadata Aggregation webinar below or over at our Vimeo account. Links to download each presenter’s slides are included in this post as well. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to get to all of the questions that came up during the webinar. However, our presenters agreed to answer a few more in writing for our blog. You can find them below in the Extended Q&A section.

On January 22, at 2 pm eastern, we will be hosting a webinar about metadata aggregation. We’ll be taking an inside look at aggregation best practices at two of our DPLA Service Hubs in North Carolina and South Carolina. In addition, DPLA has been working on improving our existing tools as well as creating some new ones for metadata aggregation and quality control.We’d like to share what’s in place and preview some of our plans and we hope to get feedback on future directions.

I just returned from several days in Philadelphia where I attended the American Library Association Midwinter conference. About 7,000 folks attended Midwinter, but that’s nothing compared to ALA Annual, which typically brings upwards of 30,000 people together to think and talk about libraries, open access, privacy, maker spaces, technology, and information provision and consumption. Always fascinating, the Philly conference was no different.