The DPLAfest 2017 program of sessions, workshops, lightning talks, and more is now available! Look for opportunities to engage with topics such as social justice and digital collections; public engagement; library technology and interoperability; metadata best practices; ebooks; and using digital collections in education and curation projects.

We celebrate the diversity of our DPLA community of partners and users and want to ensure that these perspectives are represented at DPLAfest, which is why we are thrilled to announce three fully funded travel awards to attend DPLAfest 2017.

The American Library Association’s 2017 Midwinter Meeting & Exhibits begins next week in Atlanta, Georgia and DPLA staffers are excited to connect with a fantastic community of librarians and share updates on the exciting projects underway and upcoming at DPLA in 2017. Here’s your guide to when and where to catch up with DPLA’s staff and community members at ALA Midwinter.

We’re pleased to announce that registration for DPLAfest 2017 — taking place on April 20-21 in Chicago, Illinois — has officially opened. We invite all those interested from public and research libraries, cultural organizations, the educational community, state and local government, the creative community, publishers, the technology sector, and the general public to join us for conversation and community building as we celebrate our fourth annual DPLAfest.

DPLA is seeking session proposals for DPLAfest 2017, an annual conference that brings together librarians, archivists, and museum professionals, developers and technologists, publishers and authors, educators, and many others to celebrate DPLA and its community of creative professionals.

The next DPLA Board of Directors call is scheduled for Thursday, December 15 at 2:00 PM Eastern.

DPLA is seeking session proposals for DPLAfest 2017, an annual conference that brings together librarians, archivists, and museum professionals, developers and technologists, publishers and authors, educators, and many others to celebrate DPLA and its community of creative professionals.

Meet the winners of GIF IT UP 2016! For this year’s competition, the grand prize and runners up were determined by judges Adam Green of The Public Domain Review and Sarah Schaaf of Imgur. The People’s Choice Award was determined by most notes on Tumblr as of November 14, 2016. Europeana and Trove have also awarded prizes for best reuse of materials from their collections.

Last year, DPLA partnered with Pop Up Archive, a platform of tools for organizing and searching digital spoken word, to offer exclusive discounted services to DPLA partner organizations. One year after announcing our partnership, we are excited to join Pop Up Archive in highlighting some of the ways that their team has worked with DPLA partners to automatically transcribe, timestamp, and provide team editing interfaces for audio collections.

GIF IT UP 2016 officially kicks off October 1! We are thrilled to be kicking off our third annual GIF IT UP contest and are already eager to see your great submissions. To get the ball rolling, here’s your one-stop guide to everything you need to get started.

Calling all gif makers, creatives, history nuts, animators, and more! GIF IT UP, the annual DPLA competition seeking innovative and endlessly looping uses of archival videos and images, returns on October 1.

Mark your calendars! We’re thrilled to announce that DPLAfest 2017—the fourth major gathering of the Digital Public Library of America’s broad community—will take place on April 20-21, 2017 in Chicago at Chicago Public Library’s Harold Washington Library Center.

We’re pleased to invite our extended community to attend a free DPLA workshop webinar — Using DPLA for Genealogy and Family Research, taking place on July 26, 2016 at 3:00pm EST.

The American Library Association’s Annual Conference kicks off later this week in Orlando, Florida and DPLA staffers are excited to hit the road, connect with a fantastic community of librarians and, now more than ever, show our support for the city of Orlando. Here’s your guide to when and where to catch up with DPLA’s staff and community members at ALA Annual.

This guest post was written by T-Kay Sangwand, Librarian for Digital Collection Development, Digital Library Program, UCLA and DPLA + DLF ‘Cross-Pollinator.’ (Twitter: @tttkay)

The next DPLA Board of Directors call is scheduled for Wednesday, June 15 at 3:00 PM Eastern. Agenda and dial-in information is included below. This call is open to the public, except where noted.

This guest post was written by Nancy Moussa, Web Developer at University of Michigan Library, DPLA Community Rep and DPLA + DLF ‘Cross-Pollinator.’ (Twitter: @nancy_moussa)

This guest post was written by Jasmine Burns, Image Technologies and Visual Literacy Librarian, Indiana University and DPLA + DLF ‘Cross-Pollinator.’

With DPLAfest 2016 larger than ever, we reached out to a few attendees ahead of the event to help us capture the (many) diverse experiences of fest participants. These ‘special correspondents’ have graciously volunteered to share their personal perspectives on the fest. In this second guest post by our special correspondents, Kristen Yarmey and Patrick Murray-John, both of whom are part of the DPLA Community Reps program reflect on their fest experiences from the perspectives of their fields and interests: the growth of DPLA and its network and sharing and creative reuse of cultural heritage materials.

We’re pleased to invite our extended community to attend a free two-part DPLA workshop webinar, RightsStatements.org: Why We Need It, What It Is (and Isn’t) and What Does It Mean for the DPLA Network and Beyond? Over the course of two workshops, Emily Gore, DPLA, and Greg Cram, NYPL, will discuss the recently launched RightsStatements.org project.