“The dream of a national digital public library is inching closer to the planning stage. The Berkman Center at Harvard University convened a large and diverse group of stakeholders to define the scope, architecture, costs, and administration for a proposed Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).”

“The right gizmos could help bring library e-books and other media to America’s poor and our cash-strapped middle class.”

From Sandy Thatcher: “I’m terribly interested to see what will come out of the DPLA’s beta sprint and I was heartened by Char Booth’s excellent interview about the Hathi Trust.”

From Sandy Thatcher: “Just two quick observations on the continuing debate by David Rothman et al. about whether and how the Digital Public Library of America should serve the interests of both academic and public libraries, and how their roles in serving their patrons differ.”

From David Rothman: “Americans urgently need home access to a wealth of e-books, databases and other goodies since many people cannot conveniently visit neighborhood libraries in person, and I love the idea of a national reference service available by phone and the Web, but let’s not do away with the warm, fuzzy, in-person kind of reference help—a danger that will grow if the DPLA insists on branding itself as a ‘Public’ Library despite the risk of library enemies using this as ammunition. “

“The Open Knowledge Commons (OKC) has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support the first meeting of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) Technical Workstream, which will explore and make recommendations around a proposed technical architecture for the DPLA.”

“There has been some discussion of how an ECL might be structured to benefit e.g. the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), but given the absence of precedent in the USA for this form of voluntary rights association (VRA), achieving a solution equitable for all parties faces many hurdles.”

From David Rothman: “I badly want the DPLA to succeed, but its people need to cut out the library-unity rhetoric and work toward intertwined but separate public and academic systems.”

From Evolving Libraries: “I’m still convinced that there’s an alternate reality that branched off from our own in the 90s, where librarians led the development of the web instead of lagging far behind other interested parties. In our reality though, that ship has sailed–all libraries can really do now it is cast a grapple on Google and let it tow them along.”

“The DPLA’s clean slate approach has the potential to connect and magnify the success and the considerable digital content already offered by projects like the Internet Archive, HathiTrust, or the American Memory project.”

“There have been a lot of announcements lately about the development of national and regional digital libraries. Most recently, the online Chinese newspaper, Xinhuanet, reported that China has plans to ‘build a nationwide digital library network with the National Digital Library of China at the center.'”

“The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded CLIR/DLF a $46,000 planning grant to develop a prototype for the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).”

“At the moment, the DPLA has the luxury of being in the talk-and-think stage. The organization consists of a steering committee, an open wiki and an open mailing list.”

“Five-story robots patrol an underground chamber to retrieve books beneath the Mansueto Library at the University of Chicago. It’s a sight that would impress most people, but U.S. librarians and academics have their eyes set on a still more futuristic concept. They want to build the Digital Public Library of America.”

From David Rothman: “Perhaps someday the Digital ‘Public’ Library of America will puzzle out what it needs to be.”

“The DPLA, its leaders say, will place the resources of top research libraries in the world in the pocket of every American. They foresee a time when some of the most scarce books are easily accessible to “independent scholars” on their home desktops and smart phones.”

“For those looking to learn more about this project or just to read an interesting debate on the role of massive digital libraries, the Library Journal has posted a Point-Counterpoint consisting of David Rothman who believes that there should be at least two versions of the DPLA”

“We need a mechanism to start building, in an iterative fashion … on open-source code base, with metadata that is as open as we can make it, the materials openly available, and always ‘free to all’.”

“Essentially, the thought is that the front-end of a digital collection no longer needs to be intrinsically tied to the back-end. Archives can select, acquire, and preserve objects, while libraries/museums can handle discovery and access, creating overlapping, dynamic collections that pull objects from archives.”

“Based on following the listserv, there has been a lot of energy, which can sometimes seem to be more heat than light, invested in the determination of the definition of each individual word in that name–Digital, Public, Library, and I swear, sometimes even America.”