IDEAS: “Who do you see using the DPLA?”
DARNTON: “I imagine an enormously varied public. I’m convinced there are people throughout this country who just want to write something to express their own understanding of the world and need material to do that writing . . . .I think there are lots of people in community colleges – many of these community colleges hardly have libraries, but now it should be possible for every community college in the country to have access to something greater than the Library of Congress. I imagine people in retirement homes who would want access to books to entertain themselves. I think there will be lots of uses in K-12 schools . . . .I think what it will do, in a word, is to democratize access to knowledge.”
From Richard Beck’s interview with Robert Darnton in the Boston Globe, “A bookshelf the size of the world”