This year DPLA is an official sponsor of National History Day in Missouri. With the excellent assistance of the DPLA staff, teaching guides and materials were prepared sharing DPLA resources related to this year’s theme: Leadership and Legacy in History. Also a prize was created for the student whose work made the best use of DPLA-related resources at the state finals next spring. My simple hope is these young folks will move from searching online, to helping get the history of our state online. Otherwise we may lose much near-history of the Show-Me State or have it hidden to others.

There’s no better way to wrap up a busy year than with a showcase of awesome GIFs made from open materials. Over the past couple of months we’ve had tons of fun running the GIF IT UP competition with our good friends at DigitalNZ. Thank you to everyone who entered!

This post is part of a series from Book Patrol, a blog run by DPLA Community Rep Michael Lieberman that highlights interesting news, images, and related content from all corners of the book universe. In this post, Michael relates a couple of recent Oscar Wilde related happenings and archival holdings available for your perusal through DPLA. To learn more about Book Patrol, visit http://bookpatrol.net/

The DPLA Board of Directors call will hold an open call on Monday, December 15, at 3:00 PM Eastern.

As a Community Rep for Vermont, I introduced Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) to employees of the Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC) in White River Junction, Vermont, during its Disability Employment Awareness event on October 16, 2014. I have been volunteering at VAMC this year in order to contribute toward programs that benefit current and retired members of the U.S. Armed Forces and their families. Bringing DPLA to veterans and civilians with disabilities was my first effort as the Community Rep to bridge digital divides among under-represented populations. The event’s motto “Expect. Employ. Empower.” was about creating a society of inclusion, thus it seemed to be a perfect fit for DPLA.

The DPLA Technical Advisory Committee will lead an open committee call on Wednesday, December 3 at 2:00 PM Eastern.

This is the first in a new series of posts from Book Patrol, a blog run by DPLA Community Rep Michael Lieberman that highlights interesting news, images, and related content from all corners of the book universe. Over the coming weeks and months, Michael will scour the DPLA for interesting archival finds and publish them here and on our Tumblr. To learn more about Book Patrol, visit http://bookpatrol.net/

The Digital Commonwealth’s “metadata mob” is a fun and creative type of mob — less roughneck and more spontaneous dance routine. Except, instead of wildly cavorting to Do-Re-Mi in train stations, they cut-and-paste, transcribe, script, spell check, authorize, regularize, refine, edit, and enhance.

Digitization efforts in the US have, to date, been overwhelmingly dominated by academic libraries, but public libraries are increasingly finding a niche by looking to their local collections as sources for original content. The Hennepin County Library has partnered with the Minnesota Digital Library (MDL)—and now the Digital Public Library of America—to bring thousands of items to the digital realm from its extensive holdings in the James K. Hosmer Special Collections Department. These items include maps, atlases, programs, annual reports, photographs, diaries, advertisements, and trade catalogs.

It’s been a little over a month since we launched GIF IT UP, an international competition to find the best GIFs reusing public domain and openly licensed digital video, images, text, and other material available via our search portals. Since then we’ve received dozens of wonderful submissions from all over the world. The winners will have their work featured and celebrated online at the Public Domain Review and Smithsonian.com. What are you waiting for? Submit a GIF today!

The DPLA Board of Directors’ Governance Committee will hold an executive session conference call on Wednesday, November 12, 2014. The purpose of the call is to discuss a slate of Board nominees and to come up with next steps. Pursuant to DPLA’s open meetings guidelines, this call will be closed to the public, as the Board Governance subcommittee will deliberate and consider matters of personnel.

The DPLA’s Marketing and Outreach Committee will lead an open committee call on Friday, November 7 at 2:00 PM Eastern.

It’s a public domain celebration! The Digital Public Library of America and DigitalNZ are holding GIF IT UP, an international competition over the next six weeks to find the best GIFs reusing public domain and openly licensed digital video, images, text, and other material available via our search portals. The winners will have their work featured and celebrated online at the Public Domain Review and Smithsonian.com. Pretty sweet, huh?

We’re excited to announce the release of a new Community Reps-produced resource, GLAM Hack-in-a-box, a short guide to organizing and convening a hackathon using cultural heritage data from GLAM organizations (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) including DPLA. We hope this guide will serve as a useful resource for those either unfamiliar with or inexperienced in pulling together a hackathon.

Washington, DC & BOSTON — The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced today a $999,485 grant to the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) for a major expansion of its infrastructure.

The Content Strategy Committee will hold an open call on Wednesday, October 1 at 2:00 PM EDT. Registration and agenda information can be found here.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is pleased to announce that Indianapolis, Indiana will serve as host city for its second-ever DPLAfest celebration, taking place on April 17-18, 2015. Area institutions serving as co-hosts to DPLAfest 2015 include the Indianapolis Public Library, the Indiana State Library, the IUPUI University Library, and the Indiana Historical Society.

More awesome news from DPLA! Hot on the heels of announcements about newly added materials from the Medical Heritage Library and the Government Printing Office, we’re excited to share that some 92,000 items from the J. Paul Getty Trust are now also available.

The Technical Advisory Committee will hold an open call on Tuesday, September 23 at 1:00 PM EDT. The agenda is now available.

We were pleased to share yesterday that nearly 60,000 items from the Medical Heritage Library have made their way into DPLA, and we’re now doubly pleased to share that nearly 150,000 items from the Government Printing Office’s (GPO) Catalog of U.S. Government Publications (CGP) are now also available via DPLA.