On Friday, March 2, Harvard Library Strategic Conversations will sponsor a free and open program titled “Building the Digital Public Library of America.”

Robert Darnton, Harvard University Librarian and Professor of History, received a 2011 National Humanities Medal for his work with the DPLA.

In an announcement made February 9, Penguin Group has terminated its contract with OverDrive, the largest distributer of digital content to American libraries and Penguin’s partner.

“I was a guest at a recent DPLA ‘Audience and Participation Work Stream’ meeting that brought together participants with a variety of perspectives and experience, but joined by a deep concern for the future of libraries…”

“”I was fortunate to be among those attending Robert Darnton’s talk on the Digital Public Library of America initiative last week…”

“On January 17th I attended a lecture given by Professor Robert Darnton, hosted by SCONUL and JISC at the Royal Society, on ‘The Digital Public Library of America: Current Plans and Future Prospects’.”

“A group of people including Professor Darnton propose to change this situation, to open up access to knowledge by creating a National Digital Library for the public – the Digital Public Library of America.”

“”Thousands of websites, from major sites like the social news website Reddit, the Internet Archive’s main site, and the English-language version of Wikipedia, to small personal WordPress blogs, have ‘gone dark’ today as part of a coordinated protest against the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), currently in committee in the House, and the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), scheduled for a Senate vote on January 24…”

“Yesterday I went to a lecture by Robert Darnton, on ‘The Digital Public Library of America: Current Plans and Future Prospects’….”

“10. Digital Destiny: The ambitious Digital Public Library of America began a two-year endeavor in October to find a way to make the US cultural and scientific record available online, while the Europeana Foundation launched a plan to aggregate and distribute the continent’s cultural heritage.”

“The Digital Public Library of America discussion list has kicked into high gear again, in anticipation of an in-person meeting at the American Library Association Midwinter Conference in mid-January, 2012 in Dallas, Texas.”

“A slightly different variation would be a license that was provided to a specific institution, for example, the Digital Public Library of America. This kind of institutional license could be combined with a time-based or performance-based license, so that titles could be granted to the DPLA after five years (for example).”

San Francisco Public Library City Librarian and DPLA Steering Committee Member Luis Herrera is named 2012 Library Journal Librarian of the Year.

“The general idea for the Library is ‘to make available, free of charge, the cultural heritage of our great research libraries,’ but in a non-commercial way, unlike Google’s book project, which has been tangled up in the courts over copyright.”

“Meanwhile, important library-oriented efforts hoping to provide new solutions continue to push forward, such as the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), Internet Archive’s OpenLibrary, and the grass-roots initiative, Library Renewal.”

The University of California’s Berkeley Center for Law and Technology will tackle the orphan works issue in a April 12-13, 2012 symposium entitled “Orphans Works & Mass Digitization: Obstacles & Opportunities.”

“”The emergence of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) as a rallying point for libraries’ continuing presence in the cultural life of America was a surprise, as it went against the prevailing tea-party currents for smaller government and increased reliance on the private sector.”

“I cannot let the last Wednesday in 2011 go by without looking backwards over the last 12 months. What stands out amid the growing din of the ‘news’?”

Watch the “Report from Washington” session from the DPLA’s October 2011 Plenary Meeting in Washington, DC.

We know it’s hard to keep track of the many exciting discussions taking place on the workstream listservs, so every month we’ll compile a handy recap.