At DPLA, our metadata application profile and access platform have been centered on an item-centric library model for description: one metadata record for each individual digital object. While this method works well for most of the items in DPLA, it doesn’t translate to the way many archives are creating records for their digital objects. Instead, these institutions are applying an aggregate description to their objects. Since DPLA works with organizations that use both the item-level and aggregation-based description practices, we need a way to support both. The Archival Description Working Group will help us get there.

DPLA is pleased to announce the publication of 10 new exhibitions created by DPLA Hubs and public librarian participants in our Gates-funded Public Library Partnerships Project (PLPP).

The most important word in discussions around copyright in the United States is balance. Although there are many, often strong disagreements between copyright holders and those who wish to provide greater access to our cultural heritage, few dispute that the goal is to balance the interests of the public with those of writers, artists, and other creators.

This is the third post in our Unexpected series which covers thematic discoveries in our collection. In case you missed it, the first post covered unusual snow removal machines, while the second covered football.

The Digital Public Library of America is looking for excellent educators for its new Education Advisory Committee. We recently announced a new grant from the Whiting Foundation that funds the creation of new primary source-based education resources for student use with teacher guidance. We are currently recruiting a small group of enthusiastic humanities educators in grades 6-14 to collaborate with us on this project.

Over the past twelve months representatives from Europeana, the DPLA and Creative Commons have been exploring the possibilities for a collaborative approach to rights statements that can be used to communicate the copyright status of cultural objects published via our platforms. This work is close to the heart of both Europeana and the DPLA as we both seek to share clear and accurate information about copyright status with users.

The Digital Public Library of America and HathiTrust have had a strong relationship since DPLA’s inception in 2013. As part of our ongoing collaboration to host and make digitized books widely available, we are now working to see how we can provide our services to exciting new initiatives that bring ebooks to everyone.

DPLA releases a research paper based on its Whiting-funded education project. The paper details findings about existing online education resources and educator needs, and recommendations for an education strategy.

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.

Unless you haven’t been out of your house for the past month, you know that it’s Girl Scout cookie season. The girls out tugging boxes of cookies around the neighborhood are learning all sorts of skills they’ll use later in life as political leaders, entertainers, astronauts, and athletes. Literally. For proof, check out this list of 25 of the most famous Girl Scouts while enjoying the last of your Thin Mints and Caramel Delights…until next year.

The DPLA family was devastated to hear that one of our Community Reps, Sabra Statham, passed away suddenly on Friday. Sabra was a Digital Project Coordinator at Pennsylvania State University and had joined the Reps program in 2014 as part of the second class. In the last year, she worked enthusiastically to represent DPLA in conversation with local Pennsylvania genealogy groups and in collaboration with her fellow Pennsylvania reps. She was multitalented: in addition to her innovative work in the library at Penn State, she was an accomplished musician and a scholar of musical modernism.

Hot on the heels of last week’s announcement of KriKri and Heidrun, we here at DPLA HQ are excited to release the newest revision of the DPLA Metadata Application Profile, version 4.0 (DPLA MAP v4.0).

At the DPLA, we are particularly enthusiastic about the role that our large and expanding national network of hubs can play. Many of our service hubs have already scanned books from their regions, and are generously sharing them through DPLA. Public domain works are being aggregated by content hubs such as HathiTrust, with more coming online every month. It is clear that we can bring these threads together to create a richer, broader tapestry of ebooks for readers of all ages and interests.

Interested in using DPLA to do family research, but aren’t sure where to start? Consider the family Bible. There are two large family Bible collections in DPLA—over 2,100 (transcribed) from the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, and another 90 from the South Carolina Digital Library. They’re filled with rich information about family connections and provide insight into how people of the American South lived and died during the—mainly—18th and 19th centuries.

There are so many ways to get involved with the Digital Public Library of America, each of which contributes enormously to our mission of connecting people with our shared cultural heritage. Obviously we have our crucial hubs and institutional partners, who work closely with us to bring their content to the world. If you’re a software developer, you can build upon our code, write your own, and create apps that help to spread that content far and wide. And if you want to provide financial support, that’s easy too.

This is the second post in our new series, Unexpected, which covers thematic discoveries in our collection. Bringing together over 15,000 photographs of football, from its origins after the Civil War to Super Bowl era, and from over a thousand collections around the United States, presents an opportunity to see in one place how this uniquely American sport has been played—and imagined. Photography itself evolved in concert with the sport, from lantern slides of players to aerial shots of stadiums.

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.

Today we’re starting a new series on our blog, called Unexpected. With over eight million items in our collection (and growing!), there are countless unusual artifacts, and since we now bring together 1,400 different libraries, archives, museums, and cultural heritage sites in one place, we can begin to associate these surprising sources into rich categories and themes. Unexpected will showcase some of the most, well, unexpected, items and topics—just the tip of the DPLA iceberg. We hope the series inspires you to explore our collection further, to tell others about DPLA, and to use our materials for education, research, and just plain fun.

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.

Looking back, 2013 was characterized by a start-up mode: hiring staff, getting the site and infrastructure live, and bringing on a first slate of states and collection. 2014 was a year in which we juggled so much: many new hubs, partners, and content, lining up additional future contributors, and beginning to restructure our technology behind the scenes to prepare for an even more expansive collection and network. Beginning this year, and with the release of our strategic plan for the next three years, we will show how DPLA is hitting its stride. We encourage you to read the plan to see what’s in store, but also to know that it will require your help and support; so much in the plan is community-driven, and will be done with that same emphasis on widespread and productive collaboration.