“Earlier this year, ProgrammableWeb reported that the New York Public Library (NYPL) had launched the What’s on the Menu API, the first public API released by the institution. The New York Public Library has just announcedthe launch of the NYPL Digital Collections API which allows developers programmatic access to the Library’s vast collections of digitized creative works including manuscripts, historical maps, rare prints, photographs and much more.”

The new Digital Public Library of America (or DPLA) will be kicking off its first big pilot project at the Boston Public Library next month, and it’s now gotten a big shot in the arm courtesy of the US National Archives. It announced today that it’s donating some 1.2 million digital objects to the effort, which range from founding documents to Civil War photos to World War II posters.

This week’s digest looks at the European Union’s Open Data rules, extending the arc of publishing through a preprint service, how New Hampshire’s libraries are busier than ever despite a digital trend, NBC Sport’s digitization of its video library, and Iowa City’s digital library effort.

The following is part of a series that looks at The Digital Public Library of America – the first national effort to aggregate existing records in state and regional digital libraries so that they are searchable from a single portal. It is written by Annie Schutte, a librarian, teacher and consultant for Knight Foundation. Above: Copy of a woodcut showing the completion of the transcontinental railroad, May 10, 1869, at Promontory, Utah. From the Classified Photographs Collection of the Utah State Historical Society.

“Examine an old portrait of George Washington, read a pulp crime story in a “penny dreadful” or page through medieval manuscripts at Harvard from the comfort of home. The Digital Public Library of America, launching April 18, will open collections from libraries and museums across the country to anyone with an Internet connection — for free.”

“The question that has most frequently come up in the course of the two-year planning process for theDigital Public Library of America (DPLA) has been a very simple one: What is it?”

““The DPLA is being created to satisfy a need,” said Robert Darnton, director of the Harvard University library system. “This need is widespread and deep. It is the need to make the cultural heritage of this country available to everyone in the country and, in fact, everyone in the world.””

“A group of private individuals has apparently done what the government and Google have not been able to do: establish a national digital public library. Aptly named the Digital Public Library of America , or DPLA for for short, this library aims to become the national archive of content that is currently tucked away in libraries, museums, and universities around the country, accessible only to those patrons with the means to go to the physical location and who have the permission to access the contents.”

“The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is a project to make the holdings of America’s research libraries, archives, and museums available to all Americans, and eventually to everyone in the world, online and free of charge. Quoting from Robert Darnton’s article for The New York Review for Books, The National Digital Public Library Is Launched at http://goo.gl/G1Ir6, “Thanks to the Internet and a pervasive if imperfect system of education, we now can realize the dream of Jefferson and Franklin. We have the technological and economic resources to make all the collections of all our libraries accessible to all our fellow citizens—and to everyone everywhere with access to the World Wide Web. That is the mission of the DPLA.”

“It seems the dream for a free, online portal to all the content that is usually stuck in libraries scattered across the country will finally become a reality. The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) will be unveiling its prototype website at the Boston Public Library on April 18 during National Library Week.”

This week’s digest covers a new free library in a Philadelphia train station, an online searchable database of international historical declassified documents, digital technology integration in the classroom, the first sale doctrine applied to a recent case of te reselling of digital goods, and a web exhibit about the art and science of book conservation

“The Digital Public Library of America is a beautiful idea. Take the physical-to-digital ambition of Google Books and wed it to the civic spirit of the US public library system, providing a centralized portal to a decentralized network of digital media from libraries, museums, universities, archives, and other local, regional, and national collections. Framed in this way, it all seems so logical, so proper, so clear — everything the internet as a public commons promised to be. Surely the messy reality of copyright law, limited local budgets, or the cat-herding that goes into any grand alliance of independent institutions was bound to foul it up somewhere.”

“The beginnings of the first public, national, on-line library will soon be unveiled in Boston – home to the country’s first publicly supported municipal library.”

“The Digital Public Library of America, to be launched on April 18, is a project to make the holdings of America’s research libraries, archives, and museums available to all Americans—and eventually to everyone in the world—online and free of charge. How is that possible? In order to answer that question, I would like to describe the first steps and immediate future of the DPLA. But before going into detail, I think it important to stand back and take a broad view of how such an ambitious undertaking fits into the development of what we commonly call an information society.”

The following is part of a series that looks at The Digital Public Library of America – the first national effort to aggregate existing records in state and regional digital libraries so that they are searchable from a single portal. It is written by Annie Schutte, a librarian, teacher and consultant for Knight Foundation.

“In another single-topic Digital Campus, we react to the news that Dan is headed to the Digital Public Library of America as its Executive Director (no tears, no tears) by forcing him to tell us all about it. Special guests on the podcast include Berkman Center and DPLA Technical Workstream member David Weinberger, author of Too Big to Know and Everything is Miscellaneous as well as Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows and The Big Switch. Issues raised include Internet centralization, the future of public libraries, and Mr. Potato Head.”

Robert Darnton heads the world’s largest collection of academic publications, the Harvard University Library system. He is also a driver behind the new Digital Public Library of America. Ahead of its launch in April, he talks about Google, science journals and the open-access debate.

This week’s digest looks at libraries’ new ways of browsing digital data, the creation of the Collaboration to Clarify the Costs of Curation in Europe, a Massachusetts library’s quest to create a digital learning lab that stresses hanging out/messing around/geeking out, the new app from the National Library of Australia for browsing their collection of 13,000 sheets of music, and finally, a documentary from 2002 entitled “The Library in Crisis” that still rings true today.

The following is part of a series that looks at The Digital Public Library of America – the first national effort to aggregate existing records in state and regional digital libraries so that they are searchable from a single portal. It focuses on one of the six state digital libraries that will act as a service hub for the project. It is written by Annie Schutte, a librarian, teacher and consultant for Knight Foundation.

“The Underground New York Public Library” brings e-books to commuters, while a blog of the same name documents which books straphangers are reading on the subway.