1

Digital Public Library of America

What, Where, Who, Why, How?For Historians Meeting

October 2014

Some basic questions:

• Where is it located? - Boston MA• Who is this? - About 10 dedicated staff• Why should you be interested? - many reasons• How does it work? - collaboratively!

3

What is the Digital Public Library of America?

DPLA is an all-digital library that utilizes metadata and images from

many institutions all over the world.

A further description of the DPLA

• Officially, the DPLA is “an open, distributed network of comprehensive online resources that [draws] on the nation’s living heritage from libraries, universities, archives and museums in order to educate , inform, and empower everyone on current and future generations”.

• So, it’s not a place, but a pointer.

• Unoffically – it’s really cool! Here’s why I think so…

5

• The DPLA is essentially a single point of entry for a hub of information

• It’s an easy on-ramp for smaller organizations• The DPLA contains aggregated metadata - not

the actual online items. Those remain at their original location.

6

Where and who?• People, places…

How is it paid for? - Private sources include the Sloan Foundation ($2.5 million), the Arcadia Foundation ($2.5

million), the Soros Foundation’s Open Society Institute, the Mellon Foundation and, most recently, the Knight Foundation ($1 million). Public agencies include the National Endowment for the Humanities (which has provided two grants, totaling more than $1 million) and the Institute of Museum and Library Services, which gave $999,485 on Sept. 30, 2014, in addition

to the $250,000 they gave in 2012.

When did it go live? - April 18, 2013.

7

Why should be you be interested?

• Because…the DPLA is great at providing context, pulling together strands of our history and cultural heritage, and organizing those strands into one tapestry of common knowledge.

• In my mind, the #1 thing that DPLA does is contextualizing history, as told through the primary source documents like government documents and images.

• And what good is a collection that no one knows about or uses?

8

From NY History Blog by Peter Feinman:

…the amount of cultural heritage material that has become available on the Internet has exploded, giving small public history

institutions access to resources that were previously unimaginable and helping

museums make better use of their own collections

9

Digitization potentially allows for the exhibition of the “back room” but only if

those in charge of the digitization process are interested in making available that which has not been easily accessible.

10

Copyright?

A PORTAL FOR DISCOVERY

A PLATFORM TO BUILD UPON

A STRONG PUBLIC OPTION

Remember the 3P’s:

A PORTAL FOR DISCOVERY

EXPLORE THROUGH TIME

BROWSE BY PLACE

BROWSE BY VIRTUAL BOOKSHELF

EXPLORE CURATED EXHIBITS

WHERE DOES THE CONTENTCOME FROM?

18 Hubs and growing

National network of partners

CONTENT HUBS

SERVICE HUBS

PONDS --> LAKES OCEAN

OpenPics

INNOVATIVE APPS

Works great on phones and

tablets!

CULTURE COLLAGE

Free and non-copyrighted data

geonames.org/4901594

ENHANCED DATA

NATIONAL NETWORK, LOCAL IMPACT,GLOBAL REACH

The Context

• Lots of cultural heritage content is already available online, and more content is coming online every day.

The Problem•Unfortunately, much of this distributed

content is poorly discoverable and underutilized by prospective users.

Because after all,

Summary

• DPLA is a networking platform that helps cultural organizations maximize the discovery and use of their content.

A group of librarians in the Kaaterskill (Catskill Mountains, New York),1913. F. W. Faxon. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. AmericanLibrary Association Archives

Locally…• Empire State Digital Network (New York)… the ESDN is the

first service hub to be created explicitly as a means for sharing New York’s rich digital cultural heritage with the DPLA. The Network will be administered by the Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) in collaboration with eight allied regional library councils collectively working as NY3Rs Association. This includes the RRLC.

• Together, they will provide the necessary personnel and technological infrastructure needed to contribute digital resources from hundreds of New York’s libraries, archives, museums, and cultural heritage institutions to the Digital Public Library of America.

An example of Ponds Lakes Oceans

• Which is a fancy way of saying that members of the NewYorkHeritage.org site will be members of the ESDN and thus in the DPLA.

What is the ESDN?• A service hub to share NYH with DPLA• There are 2 phases: Phase 1 from now until

March 2015 is ingesting collections now online in NY Heritage et al.

• Phase 2 (May 2015-April 2016) will try to add collections not currently in online collections, and may allow subscriptions to allow collections to be added by individual institutions that do not want to join individual councils.

37

38

Further information?

• Who are local members?• Who do you ask for detailed information - how

to join, costs involved expectations, etc.?• Frances Andreu - at the RRLC• Experiences as a volunteer cataloging

metadata and scanning - Larry Naukam