“Scholar and Harvard University librarian Robert Darnton vowed that the Digital Public Library of America, a nonprofit, nationwide effort to digitize and offer access to millions of free, digitized books and special collections would launch by April of 2013.”
An article in Spring 2012 “JISC Inform” on the Digital Public Library of America, featuring an interview with Robert Darnton.
Susan Hildreth, IMLS Director and Steering Committee member, mentioned the DPLA in a discussion with Jaap van de Geer at Computers in Libraries 2012 in Washington, D.C.
“It is incredible to think of the potential impact in making the collective knowledge and research of major universities libraries and the digitized cultural collections of public libraries, universally accessible to all American citizens online…”
“The merits of greater aggregation help motivate the interest in the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) serving as a national platform provider for ebooks…”
“”In the absence of what Palfrey termed ‘mothers or fathers’ and in an attempt to define ‘what the It [of the DPLA] should be,’ he talked about its basic components: code (‘open source, free for all’), metadata, content, and tools and services.”
“”One of the things mentioned at the DPLA lecture I went to was that it is envisioned as a complimentary service to public libraries, not an attempt to replace them.”
In a session entitled “Better Together: Multi-Institutional Solutions to Digital Challenges” held during the second day of the 2012 Webwise Conference in Baltimore, MD, Christina DePaolo of Balboa Park Online Collaborative mentioned Digital Public Library of America planning initiative.
In her welcoming remarks during the first day of the 2012 Webwise Conference, Director of the IMLS briefly discussed the mission and history of the Digital Public Library of America planning initiative (begins around 27:20).
In his keynote address entitled “Digital Public Library of America” at the second day of the 2012 Webwise Conference in Baltimore, MD, Steering Committee Chair John Palfrey spoke about the mission and history of the Digital Public Library of America planning initiative.
