Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is very pleased to announce the release of its first group of Primary Source Sets about topics in US history, literature, and culture. These sets were developed and reviewed by a new Education Advisory Committee for use by students and teachers in grades 6-12 and higher education. Each set includes an overview, ten to fifteen primary sources, links to additional resources, and a teaching guide. This project was generously funded by the Whiting Foundation.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is thrilled to announce that an anonymous donor has committed to provide substantial support towards DPLA’s mission in the form of a $250,000 grant to strengthen DPLA’s technical capabilities. This grant will allow DPLA to expand its technology team to handle additional content ingestion and to implement important new features based around its platform and website.

Over the past fifteen months, representatives from the Europeana and DPLA networks, in partnership with Creative Commons, have been developing a collaborative approach to internationally interoperable rights statements that can be used to communicate the copyright status of cultural objects published via the DPLA and Europeana platforms.

Sunday night there wasn’t a cloud in the sky in Boston, and so we were fortunate to get a clear view of the rare supermoon eclipse. I took a telescope out to the backyard with my kids and we worked to line up the equipment, and then we chatted about astronomy, optics, and physics, umbras and penumbras. A moment of science? Yes, but ultimately much more.

DPLA and Europeana are seeking a contractor to assist us with development of our international framework for rights. The deadline for proposals is October 6. We encourage you to share this posting far and wide!

We’re pleased to share some news regarding the DPLA open committee calls, a series of conference calls that we’ve hosted for the past two years, and that helped us transition from DPLA’s planning phase into its implementation and existence as a nonprofit. Based on helpful feedback from our board, committees, and community, we have come to understand that these calls, which have been rather broad-based (on “Content,” “Tech,” etc.), have in many ways been superseded by our more focused open discussions, e.g., around our work on Hydra, and of course our critical ongoing work with our hubs and national network.

Mark your calendars! We’re thrilled to announce that DPLAfest 2016—the third annual celebration of DPLA and its broad community—will take place on April 14-15, 2016 in Washington, DC. The hosts for DPLAfest 2016 include some of our nation’s most esteemed and important cultural institutions: The National Archives and Records Administration, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Library of Congress.

The Digital Public Library of America is pleased to announce the addition of four Service Hubs that will be joining our Hub network. The Hubs represent Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The addition of these Hubs continues our efforts to help build local community and capacity, and further efforts to build an on-ramp to DPLA participation for every cultural heritage institution in the United States and its territories.

DPLA is seeking a contractor to assist us with development of our metadata ingestion system. The deadline for proposals is August 31. We encourage you to share this posting far and wide!

Come work with us! We’re pleased to share an exciting new DPLA job opportunity, Ebook Project Manager. The deadline to apply is August 31. We encourage you to share this posting far and wide!

We are very pleased to announce our 2015-2016 Education Advisory Committee. From an extremely qualified pool of over 300 candidates who responded to our Call for Educators Participants, including educators in many fields and institutions across the U.S., we have selected ten outstanding participants.

The Digital Public Library of America is pleased to announce the appoint of Niko Pfund to its distinguished Board of Directors. Pfund is the Global Academic Publisher of Oxford University Press, and President of Oxford University Press, USA.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is thrilled to be recognized as an American Association of School Librarians (AASL) 2015 Best Apps for Teaching & Learning. Chosen for its embodiment of AASL’s learning standards and support of the school librarian’s role in implementing career and college readiness standards, this is DPLA’s second “Best of” award from the prestigious education-oriented division of the American Library Association. DPLA was recognized as a Best Website for Teaching & Learning in 2013.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is on the way to connecting online collections from coast to coast by 2017 – an effort boosted by a new $3.4 million investment, comprising $1.9 million from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and $1.5 million from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. These two new awards, coupled with significant earlier support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Endowment for the Humanities, will allow DPLA to open new Service Hubs that provide a way for all cultural heritage organizations across the country to connect through one national collection.

As part of the White House’s Open Ebooks initiative, DPLA is calling on librarians and other information professionals to help coordinate books for inclusion in the program to help connect children with ebooks. We are seeking motivated, engaged community members who have experience with building and organizing children and young adult book collections, who have time to spend building out the first two collections.

The Digital Public Library of America is looking for excellent educators for its new Education Advisory Committee. We recently announced a new grant from the Whiting Foundation that funds the creation of new primary source-based education resources for student use with teacher guidance. We are currently recruiting a small group of enthusiastic humanities educators in grades 6-14 to collaborate with us on this project.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is pleased to announce that it has received $96,000 from the Whiting Foundation to begin creating resources for users in K-12 and higher education. The grant will allow DPLA to develop and share primary source sets built on the foundation of national educational standards and under the guidance of a diverse group of education experts. DPLA will also refine tools for creating user-generated content so that students and teachers can curate their own resources as part of the learning process.

We are excited to announce that DPLA is officially on Pinterest! Check out some of our favorite images from the DPLA collection that are available to share, with some fun themed boards—whether you are a fashion fiend, a nature lover, a bookworm, or anything in-between, there’s something new for you to discover. Make sure to follow DPLA’s account so you don’t miss any of the other exciting content to come. Then, like it, pin it, share it, and be inspired by it!

Over the past twelve months representatives from Europeana, the DPLA and Creative Commons have been exploring the possibilities for a collaborative approach to rights statements that can be used to communicate the copyright status of cultural objects published via our platforms. This work is close to the heart of both Europeana and the DPLA as we both seek to share clear and accurate information about copyright status with users.

While the United States was in the midst of the Civil War, the country was also making one of its greatest breakthroughs in transportation—the Transcontinental Railroad. From the railroad’s war-weary beginnings, to the last Golden Spike at Promontory Summit in Utah on May 10, 1869, the railroad’s development forever changed American travel and communication. It also had long-reaching and irrevocable impacts on the lives of Native Americans and Chinese immigrant laborers, who bore the brunt of the treacherous tunneling and track-laying across the country. Our newest exhibition “Building the Transcontinental Railroad” explores the railroad’s construction and its impact on American culture and westward expansion.