DPLA’s Metadata Working Group is proud to announce Practical Approaches for Reparative Description, a workshop series designed for people working with cultural heritage data looking to deepen their understanding and practice of reparative description. Reparative description focuses on remediating or contextualizing potentially outdated or harmful language used in descriptive practices, ensuring accuracy and inclusivity (definition derived from Yale’s Reparative Archival Description).

Last week, the Outreach and Assessment and Metadata Working Groups presented “Introduction to OpenRefine,” a well-attended webinar led by Helen Baer, Digital Projects Librarian at Colorado State University. We are grateful to Helen for giving tips on how to get started with OpenRefine, a powerful metadata cleaning tool that can transform your DPLA metadata workflows, and for demonstrating many of the software’s most useful and relevant functions in an accessible manner.

When the conversations that resulted in the birth of the Digital Public Library of America in 2010 began, it was with the belief that everyone should have access to knowledge and that the transition to digital should expand, not limit, that access. More than 10 years later, these principles are still guiding our work, despite the big shifts we’ve witnessed in our field and across our nation.

Are you curious about DPLA’s work to increase the discovery and use of collections by connecting our partner institutions to Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia? Find out more and contact us to get involved.

As I approach my eighth week in this role, I write with an update on what I’ve been up to and where some of our projects stand as we wrap up 2023. 

As some of you are aware, the DPLA Analytics Dashboard is not functioning properly. We believe this issue is related to a problem that occurred during changes implemented by Google to deprecate Universal Analytics in favor of Google Analytics 4 (GA4), a migration that DPLA had planned for and shared about to the network in June. We have spent significant time investigating the issue and wanted to send you an update on what we know.

Did you know that DPLA provides free access to more than 49 million cultural heritage artifacts from 6,000 organizations across the country? Check out how our free resources can benefit students, teachers, researchers, history buffs, genealogists, and more. Reach out to us at info@dp.la to share this infographic with your school or library.

It has been a busy fall at DPLA, with a variety of informative events organized by our working groups. And it is not over yet: On November 16, at 1p ET, the Metadata Working Group will host a Network Coffee Chat to talk about their work to create the Metadata Best Practices Report, based on conversations and information from organizations across the DPLA Network. You can register for that conversation here.

Last week, I partnered with Giovanna Fontenelle, Program Officer, Culture and Heritage, at Wikipedia for this article, posted originally on the Wikimedia News site Diff, about our Wikimedia work. Over the last several years, DPLA has become the biggest institutional contributor to Wikimedia Commons, thanks to the support of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Wikimedia Foundation and the contributions of the Wikimedia Working Group.

This summer I’ve given updates on our work at the ALA Annual Conference in June and at last month’s DPLA Open Board + Community Meeting. I shared a summary of where we’ve been, talked about what we are working on now, and previewed where we are headed. For the latter, we shared that DPLA would soon begin a strategic visioning process. As the summer comes to a close, I’m excited to share with you our plans for this process. 

A single point of access to the riches of America’s cultural heritage stewarded by libraries, archives, and museums across the nation. Ten years ago, that was the audacious founding vision of DPLA. To more fully realize that vision, DPLA has pioneered a program that connects our nation’s cultural heritage to Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia. Late last month, DPLA presented more about this work at ALA’s inaugural LibLearn X in New Orleans. 

A $750,000 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to the Digital Public Library of America will fuel a multi-year effort to connect America’s cultural heritage institutions with Wikipedia, the world’s free online encyclopedia. This grant will offer an opportunity to make millions of cultural treasures from hundreds of American libraries, archives, and museums freely available online, including Renaissance manuscripts from Philadelphia’s Science History Institute; historic photos of the Pacific Northwest from Seattle Public Library; and portraits of 18th-century actors from the University of Illinois.

This is the second blog in a series from DPLA’s Digital Equity Project: Advancing Racial Justice in American Libraries. (You can find the first here.) This month, I am pleased to share with you an update from Teresa Cain, Sarah Gherghel, and Debbie Rubenstein at Charlotte Mecklenburg Library on the library’s Living Archives, one of […]

This is the first blog in a series from DPLA’s Digital Equity Project: Advancing Racial Justice in American Libraries. Derek Webb, Head of Archives at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries shares how the partnership between the Libraries and The Milwaukee Women’s Art Library and their collaboration on a new community ambassador position seeks to bridge […]

Digital Public Library of America recently launched a new application to run a core part of its infrastructure, the DPLA API. This software upgrade improves security, performance, reliability, and privacy for our users. It also allows developers to adapt to new services and maintain the code over time. The DPLA tech team transitioned to the […]

Over the summer, we gave a wide-ranging update on the accomplishments of our Wikimedia Project to date and promised forthcoming news on what’s coming up next. In the last few months, we have launched several new projects with renewed funding, and we are also working to increase collaboration and idea-sharing with the launch of the new Wikimedia Working Group.

On Tuesday, we gathered with more than 70 of our colleagues for an information session on our recently announced Digital Equity Project. Our goal was to give some context and background on the project, share information on our big-picture plans and the opportunities this new funding presents, and answer questions from our community.  In 2019, […]

Today, I am pleased to share that we have partnered with an initial cohort of three organizations to form a Digital Equity Project Community of Practice: Charlotte Mecklenburg Library; Seattle Public Library; and DPLA’s Recollection Wisconsin Hub / University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries. Each of these organizations will receive subgrant awards to pursue a project dedicated to digital capacity building.

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is pleased to announce an $850,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to support its effort to advance racial justice in American archives. This funding will enable DPLA to launch a digital equity project to develop community-based partners and increase partner capacity to lead this work. The three-year project will provide support for underrepresented, under-resourced archives and expand DPLA’s capacity for supporting and partnering with diverse archival projects.

Dear Friends of DPLA, We are looking forward to being back at ALA Annual in just a couple of short weeks, and hope to see many of you in person for the first time in far too long. We are pleased to share that there will be several opportunities to gather with DPLA colleagues and […]