“The Digital Public Library of America doesn’t exist yet, but it’s closer to becoming a reality.”

“Last Thursday and Friday, a group of librarians, scholars, industry leaders, and educators came together for the first plenary meeting to begin serious plans for a ‘Digital Public Library of America.”

The Digital Public Library of America, an initiative spearheaded by Harvard faculty members, is making fast progress toward developing a fully operational online database of existing digitized works by April 2013.

Although the project is still financially, logistically, and technologically in the conceptual and planning phase, it has certainly generated plenty of enthusiasm.

David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, gives his take on the October 2011 Plenary Meeting in Washington DC.

Melissa Mannon discusses the “digital divide” and evaluates where the DPLA may factor in.

Hiawatha Bray of the Boston Globe reports on the DPLA.

Nate Hill responds to his work with the Audience & Participation workstream at the DPLA conference.

John Palfrey and a cabal of Harvard academics have forged a movement from the fire of frustrated librarians, archivists, and information professionals who have recognized that a lot of the present system is broken and going nowhere fast.

David Weinberger’s liveblogs from the October 21 Plenary Meeting in Washington DC.

Erik Mitchell’s thoughts on the October 21 Plenary Meeting in Washington DC.

NEH Chairman Jim Leach’s speech at the October 2011 Plenary Meeting in Washington DC.

“What Carnegie did for public libraries a century ago, the DPLA could—if successful—accomplish for our era.”

What would a new world online be without a new public library?

What if the Internet Archive and the Library of Congress and public libraries and individuals and local historical groups could all draw from those deep wells, all contribute to that common pool?

Amanda French’s speech from the plenary on the soul and body of the library.

This project is going to revolutionize the web for one very simple reason. Metadata.

Collective licenses would permit a group of rightsholders to negotiate uniform licenses for specific types of access to a broad class of works for target audiences, usually for-fee, but not always.

In advance of this week’s plenary meeting, I spoke with Carole Palmer over Skype about her team’s Beta Sprint submission, CLIR-DLF / IMLS DCC Beta Sprint.

Dan Cohen ponders what could be some the DPLA’s key assets.