Last month, I joined friends and colleagues from around the country at the American Library Association’s 2024 Annual Conference. Yet again, DPLA helped co-host the day-long ALA Ebook Interest Group meeting, now affectionately known as “ALA Ebook Friday.” My own day got off to a wild start. While surfing early that morning, I was stung […]

Our award-winning Banned Book Club will continue to highlight brilliant and beautiful works being taken off library shelves Last July, DPLA launched the Banned Book Club to ensure that all readers have access to the books they want to read. The Banned Book Club allows readers in communities directly affected by book bans to access […]

The history of book bans is the history of the fight for power. We know that, time and again, book bans seek to specifically and disproportionately silence black, brown and LGBTQIA+ authors and stories. While book bans continue across America, DPLA is proud to be part of a group of leading libraries committed to counteracting […]

Last week, in the run up to the Public Library Association’s conference in Columbus, Ohio, the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) partnered with Independent Publishers Caucus to host the inaugural IndieLib Forum. A first-of-its-kind gathering, IndieLib brought together independent publishers and librarians to connect and converse about issues crucial to both communities, yet all […]

Library lovers and self-published authors have a lot in common—they share a passion for books and reading and a desire to democratize access. For many years we at DPLA have heard interest from librarians in acquiring self-published titles. But because the corpus of self-published titles is so vast, deciding what to include in a library collection can feel like an overwhelming task to busy library selectors. When DPLA added our Indie Catalog, with nearly 500,000 self-published titles, to Palace Marketplace last year, we set out to alleviate this burden on libraries by creating Indie Selections, our own selections of self-published titles, carefully curated by our Curation Corps of librarians. 

As 2023 draws to a close, I want to thank each of you in DPLA’s ebook community for your continued support of and enthusiasm for our efforts to expand access. 2023 was a year of great growth in our ebooks work, and I wanted to reflect on some of those highlights with you: 

Since 2017, DPLA has been helping libraries meet the growing demand from readers for ebooks and audiobooks by working with publishers to provide licensing terms that help libraries maximize access and get the most out of their dollar. While the variety of options and licensing terms we have developed have been well received by our partners, they still do not allow libraries to own digital content outright, the way they do physical books.

DPLA’s mission is to maximize access to knowledge, and one of the ways we do that is by working to make the best possible ebook and audiobook licensing options available to libraries through Palace Marketplace, the only not-for-profit distributor of ebooks and audiobooks for libraries. (Palace Marketplace is run by DPLA in partnership with The Palace Project team at Lyrasis.) We chose to begin working on ebook distribution in 2017 because we believed that libraries would benefit from having an advocate in the marketplace who could interface with publishers and negotiate deals that would benefit libraries and patrons.

I am pleased to share that we have reached an agreement with Audible to make their audiobooks available to libraries through Palace Marketplace (formerly DPLA Exchange). The first batch of Audible audiobooks, including titles from authors Marie Benedict, Neal Stephenson, and Andy Weir, are already available, and titles will continue to be added to Palace Marketplace on a rolling basis.

Dear Friends of DPLA, I wanted to take a moment to update you on a promising new piece of DPLA’s ebook work. As part of our efforts to expand access to ebooks and audiobooks, we are currently in talks with Audible about making audiobooks available to libraries through Palace Marketplace (formerly the DPLA Exchange). We […]

I am pleased to share that you now can find more than half a million ebooks and audiobooks from over 1,000 publishers on the newly redesigned DPLA Exchange, the only library-owned ebook and audiobook marketplace.

Under the leadership of director Michael Blackwell, St. Mary’s County Library in Maryland has been an active participant in DPLA’s ebook work. We talked with Michael about his library’s experience with SimplyE, and how it’s helped to maximize access for patrons in St. Mary’s County.

The Texas State Library began purchasing books from the DPLA Exchange in 2019 and now has acquired more books than any other library from DPLA.