“The project to develop a Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) has become more widely publicized in the past several months, understandably accruing many different interpretations and perspectives about what it might be, what it should not be, and what it might become over time. As a concept, it has a history that goes back a few decades, when the promise of digitization and the possibility of a large repository of content that represented our cultural legacy were intuitive: digital books, images, newspapers, historical records, archives, and moving images that could be accessible to scholars, students, and interested citizens defined a public good in the most democratic sense. Today, building a digital public library for America is no longer theoretical; it has become feasible. This explains the number and diversity of current perspectives concerning the appropriate audience, potential uses, and general efficacy of such an undertaking.”
From Chuck Henry’s article in the May/June CLIR Issues Newsletter, “An Enclosure of Spirits”