Press: What is the DPLA? (Library Journal)
“The question that has most frequently come up in the course of the two-year planning process for theDigital Public Library of America (DPLA) has been a very simple one: What is it?”
“The question that has most frequently come up in the course of the two-year planning process for theDigital Public Library of America (DPLA) has been a very simple one: What is it?”
The Biodiversity Heritage Library is pleased to announce that it will serve as a digital content hub within the Digital Public Library of America.
““The DPLA is being created to satisfy a need,” said Robert Darnton, director of the Harvard University library system. “This need is widespread and deep. It is the need to make the cultural heritage of this country available to everyone in the country and, in fact, everyone in the world.””
“A group of private individuals has apparently done what the government and Google have not been able to do: establish a national digital public library. Aptly named the Digital Public Library of America , or DPLA for for short, this library aims to become the national archive of content that is currently tucked away in libraries, museums, and universities around the country, accessible only to those patrons with the means to go to the physical location and who have the permission to access the contents.”
“The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is a project to make the holdings of America’s research libraries, archives, and museums available to all Americans, and eventually to everyone in the world, online and free of charge. Quoting from Robert Darnton’s article for The New York Review for Books, The National Digital Public Library Is Launched at http://goo.gl/G1Ir6, “Thanks to the Internet and a pervasive if imperfect system of education, we now can realize the dream of Jefferson and Franklin. We have the technological and economic resources to make all the collections of all our libraries accessible to all our fellow citizens—and to everyone everywhere with access to the World Wide Web. That is the mission of the DPLA.”
“It seems the dream for a free, online portal to all the content that is usually stuck in libraries scattered across the country will finally become a reality. The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) will be unveiling its prototype website at the Boston Public Library on April 18 during National Library Week.”
This week’s digest covers a new free library in a Philadelphia train station, an online searchable database of international historical declassified documents, digital technology integration in the classroom, the first sale doctrine applied to a recent case of te reselling of digital goods, and a web exhibit about the art and science of book conservation
The New York Public Library (NYPL) is partnering with the DPLA to provide additional online access to thousands of historic materials archived at its iconic Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.
“The Digital Public Library of America is a beautiful idea. Take the physical-to-digital ambition of Google Books and wed it to the civic spirit of the US public library system, providing a centralized portal to a decentralized network of digital media from libraries, museums, universities, archives, and other local, regional, and national collections. Framed in this way, it all seems so logical, so proper, so clear — everything the internet as a public commons promised to be. Surely the messy reality of copyright law, limited local budgets, or the cat-herding that goes into any grand alliance of independent institutions was bound to foul it up somewhere.”
“The beginnings of the first public, national, on-line library will soon be unveiled in Boston – home to the country’s first publicly supported municipal library.”