Do you manage digital collections? Are you interested in the future of repository solutions? The Digital Public Library of America, Stanford University, and DuraSpace want to hear from you. Take the Hydra-in-a-Box Survey!

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.

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.

Within the Technical Working Group of the International Rights Statements Working Group, we have been focusing our efforts on identifying a set of requirements and a technically sound and sustainable plan to implement the rights statements under development. Now that two of the Working Group’s white papers have been released, we realized it was a good time to build on the introductory blog post by our Co-Chairs, Emily Gore and Paul Keller. Accordingly, we hope this post provides a good introduction to our technical white paper, Recommendations for the Technical Infrastructure for Standardized International Rights Statements, and more generally, how our thinking has changed throughout the activities of the working group.

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.

Through generous funding of the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, the Digital Public Library of America convened a two-day working meeting comprised of a diverse group of stakeholders to understand the current ecosystem for ebooks and unbundle pieces of this ecosystem to address the challenges ebooks present for libraries.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), Stanford University, and the DuraSpace organization are pleased to announce that their joint initiative has been awarded a $2M National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Nicknamed Hydra-in-a-Box, the project aims foster a new, national, library network through a community-based repository system, enabling discovery, interoperability and reuse of digital resources by people from this country and around the world.

DPLA releases a research paper based on its Whiting-funded education project. The paper details findings about existing online education resources and educator needs, and recommendations for an education strategy.

The National Endowment for the Humanities awarded $250,000 to the Digital Public Library of America today, in support of DPLA’s effort to continue to build its network of service hubs across the United States. The funds will be used to help cover states that currently do not have an on-ramp, through a state or regional digital library, for their collections to get into DPLA’s national, open collection. The award is being made as part of NEH’s new Common Good initiative, which is highlighting and demonstrating the importance of the humanities to the general public.

The Minnesota Digital Library (MDL) is one of four DPLA Service Hubs to be sub-awarded a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, through the DPLA, for the Public Library Partnership Project (PLPP). In this post, Carla Urban details MDL’s experience working on the project with public librarians in Minnesota.

At the DPLA, we are particularly enthusiastic about the role that our large and expanding national network of hubs can play. Many of our service hubs have already scanned books from their regions, and are generously sharing them through DPLA. Public domain works are being aggregated by content hubs such as HathiTrust, with more coming online every month. It is clear that we can bring these threads together to create a richer, broader tapestry of ebooks for readers of all ages and interests.

Washington, DC & BOSTON — The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced today a $999,485 grant to the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) for a major expansion of its infrastructure.

In April 2014, after research and planning, the Public Library Partnerships Project team started to convene one-day workshops for public librarians interested in digitization. Each hub—Digital Commonwealth, Digital Library of Georgia, Minnesota Digital Library, and Mountain West Digital Library—gave a workshop in the spring. We then met as group to discuss the curriculum and make necessary changes for the later workshops. We also relied on feedback from participants in the first workshops and the survey and informal feedback they had offered about their experiences. Since that meeting, we’ve continue to give workshops: so far eight more with an additional five scheduled through the end of September.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) announced today that it has received $300,000 from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation as part of its Knight News Challenge, an open contest seeking ideas that strengthen the Internet for free expression and innovation.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is pleased to announce that it has received an $81,000 grant from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation to explore educational possibilities for its growing collection. The grant will allow DPLA to convene in-person meetings for educators from a wide variety of institutions, including K-12, community colleges, and research universities, this fall in Boston.

BOSTON — The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) announced today $594,000 in new funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to research potential sustainability models and to pursue the most promising option (or options). This two-year grant will allow DPLA to expand its staff to target opportunities for further development and revenue, without compromising its mission of open access to the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums.

Read about DPLA’s entry to the Knight Foundation’s News Challenge, “Getting it Right on Rights: Simplifying, Harmonizing, and Maximizing the Openness of Rights in Digital Libraries around the World.”

Recently, DPLA teamed up with our colleagues and friends at Europeana and Kennisland to promote global interoperability of our metadata, and specifically our Rights Statement fields. In October 2013, Europeana and the DPLA organized a first joint rights management workshop to explore this possibility in Boston.

With generous funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the DPLA is working on the Public Library Partnerships Project, in collaboration with Service Hubs and their local public libraries, that offers digital skills training to public librarians. Project manager Franky Abbott gives an update on current project work and future goals.