We are pleased to announce the recipients of the 2015 DPLA + DLF Cross-Pollinator Travel Grants. The DPLA + DLF Cross-Pollinator Travel Grants is the first of a series of collaborations between CLIR/DLF and the Digital Public Library of America. It is our belief that the key to sustainability of large-scale national efforts require robust community support. Connecting DPLA’s work to the energetic and talented DLF community is a positive way to increase serendipitous collaboration around this shared digital platform.

The DPLA Board of Directors will hold an open call on Monday, March 16, at 3:00 PM Eastern. Agenda and dial-in information is included below.

The agenda for DPLAfest 2015 is now available! Featuring dozens of sessions across two days, DPLAfest 2015, taking place on April 17-18, 2015 in Indianapolis, will bring together hundreds from across the cultural heritage sector to discuss everything from technology and metadata, to (e)books, law, genealogy, and education.

The DPLA Board of Directors’ Governance Committee will hold a conference call on Wednesday, March 11, 2015 at 1:00 PM Eastern. The call is open to the public.

Code4lib 2015 was held last week from February 9-12, 2015 in Portland, Oregon. The Code4lib conferences have grown in the last ten years, both in terms of size and scope of topics. This growth is particularly impressive when you consider that much of the work of organizing the conference falls upon a circulating group of volunteers, with additional organizational support from organizations like the Digital Library Federation. It has become clear to me that the Code4lib community is interested in ensuring that it can develop and support compelling and useful conferences for everyone who chooses to participate.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is excited to work with the Digital Library Federation (DLF) program of the Council on Library and Information Resources to offer DPLA + DLF Cross-Pollinator Travel Grants. The purpose of these grants is to extend the opportunity to attend DPLAfest 2015 to four DLF community members. Successful applicants should be able to envision and articulate a connection between the DLF community and the work of DPLA.

Code4Lib is an annual, volunteer-organized conference focused on the intersection of technology and cultural heritage. DPLA is participating heavily in Code4Lib 2015, taking place on February 9 – 12 in Portland, Oregon. Here’s a handy guide detailing some of the key places they’ll be and how you can connect with them.

Thanks to all of you who attended our webinar. We had a great turnout and hope you found it interesting and informative. As promised, you can now find the video for our recent Metadata Aggregation webinar below or over at our Vimeo account. Links to download each presenter’s slides are included in this post as well. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough time to get to all of the questions that came up during the webinar. However, our presenters agreed to answer a few more in writing for our blog. You can find them below in the Extended Q&A section.

In terms of copyright, 2014 was a big year for libraries. The highlights were the release of decisions in two major copyright cases on appeal, largely in favor of library uses and affirming the applicability of fair use to certain aspects of digitization. Other developments, such as the release of a new code of best practices in fair use of collections containing orphan works, have created opportunities for libraries and other memory institutions to make further progress on addressing copyright obstacles to digital access to their collections. Before the first open committee call of the year for the DPLA Legal Committee (which is later today at 2:00pm Eastern), now is a good time for a short recap what we’ve seen over the last year and what we can expect in 2015.

Registration for DPLAfest 2015 is now open! DPLAfest brings together the full range of the cultural heritage sector to discuss everything from technology and development, to content, law, and education. DPLAfest will appeal to librarians, archivists, museum professionals, developers and technologists, publishers and authors, teachers and students, and members of the public alike who are interested in an engaging mix of interactive workshops, hackathons, engaging discussions with community leaders and practitioners, fun events, and so much more.

On January 22, at 2 pm eastern, we will be hosting a webinar about metadata aggregation. We’ll be taking an inside look at aggregation best practices at two of our DPLA Service Hubs in North Carolina and South Carolina. In addition, DPLA has been working on improving our existing tools as well as creating some new ones for metadata aggregation and quality control.We’d like to share what’s in place and preview some of our plans and we hope to get feedback on future directions.

There’s no better way to wrap up a busy year than with a showcase of awesome GIFs made from open materials. Over the past couple of months we’ve had tons of fun running the GIF IT UP competition with our good friends at DigitalNZ. Thank you to everyone who entered!

The DPLA Board of Directors call will hold an open call on Monday, December 15, at 3:00 PM Eastern.

The DPLA Technical Advisory Committee will lead an open committee call on Wednesday, December 3 at 2:00 PM Eastern.

It’s been a little over a month since we launched GIF IT UP, an international competition to find the best GIFs reusing public domain and openly licensed digital video, images, text, and other material available via our search portals. Since then we’ve received dozens of wonderful submissions from all over the world. The winners will have their work featured and celebrated online at the Public Domain Review and Smithsonian.com. What are you waiting for? Submit a GIF today!

The DPLA Board of Directors’ Governance Committee will hold an executive session conference call on Wednesday, November 12, 2014. The purpose of the call is to discuss a slate of Board nominees and to come up with next steps. Pursuant to DPLA’s open meetings guidelines, this call will be closed to the public, as the Board Governance subcommittee will deliberate and consider matters of personnel.

The DPLA’s Marketing and Outreach Committee will lead an open committee call on Friday, November 7 at 2:00 PM Eastern.

It’s a public domain celebration! The Digital Public Library of America and DigitalNZ are holding GIF IT UP, an international competition over the next six weeks to find the best GIFs reusing public domain and openly licensed digital video, images, text, and other material available via our search portals. The winners will have their work featured and celebrated online at the Public Domain Review and Smithsonian.com. Pretty sweet, huh?

The Content Strategy Committee will hold an open call on Wednesday, October 1 at 2:00 PM EDT. Registration and agenda information can be found here.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is pleased to announce that Indianapolis, Indiana will serve as host city for its second-ever DPLAfest celebration, taking place on April 17-18, 2015. Area institutions serving as co-hosts to DPLAfest 2015 include the Indianapolis Public Library, the Indiana State Library, the IUPUI University Library, and the Indiana Historical Society.