DPLA Stories

Falling fast on the heels of the DLF Forum in Denver, is the first DPLA Appfest. The Appfest is an informal, open call for both ideas and functional examples of creative and engaging ways to use the content and metadata in the DPLA back-end platform. The first Appfest will take place on November 8-9, 2012, at the Chattanooga Public Library.

For this first event, DLF is providing a limited amount of travel support for up to 3 community members to attend as DLF community delegates.

If you are interested in attending as a DLF community delegate, please send your name, contact information, and a brief statement of interest to Jena Winberry.

Delegates will be chosen based on interest and participation in the DPLA and willingness to serve as a bridge between DLF and DPLA communities.

Delegates will be asked to report back to the DLF community about the event via blog post or similar narrative.

Delegates will be notified of travel support by October 26th.

DLF has been working to coordinate and co-chair the Content & Scope Workstream for the Digital Public Library of America since mid-October. Part of this process involves lengthy discussion of key issues and goals with the workstream conveners and public members via listserv. The DPLA blog will now be posting listserv recaps at least once a month for all six of the workstreams: Audience & Participation, Content & Scope, Financial/Business Models, Governance, Legal Issues, and Technical Aspects. To read the December 2011 recaps, see the DPLA blog post. If you are interested in adding to the Content & Scope Workstream discussion, please join our listserv.

Interested in helping to launch a large-scale digital public library in the United States? Excited about the future of online access to information? Want to collaborate closely with innovative partners in public and research libraries, government, publishing, and elsewhere? Look no further! The Berkman Center seeks a part-time Research Assistant for the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) planning initiative.
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Today, December 1, 2011, on the Kojo Nnamdi Show, Maura Marx, Director of the Digital Public Library of America Secretariat at the Berkman Center at Harvard University, Martin Kalfatovic, Associate Director of Digital Services at the Smithsonian Libraries and Co-chair of the Technical Workstream of the DPLA, and Maria Pallante, United States Register of Copyrights, discussed the mission, goals, potential challenges, and future of the DPLA. Read the rest of this entry »

In a recent post on the PLA blog, Nate Hill of the San Jose public library recapped his experience at the recent National Digital Public Library meeting at the Los Angeles Public Library, and took this opportunity to suggest a new direction for public libraries and the Digital Public Library of America. Read the rest of this entry »

With projects like the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) and HathiTrust at the forefront of the digital library conversation, and representing a potential direction of digital library efforts, it is vital to incorporate the perspective of librarians from a variety of institutions and create space for collaboration across fields. This panel consists of both public and academic librarians from across the nation: Sandra McIntyre, Cheryl Walters, Nate Hill, Toby Greenwalt, Michael Lascarides, and Jefferson Bailey. Read the rest of this entry »

DPLA staffers interviewed a variety of attendees at the Digital Public Library of America Plenary Meeting on October 21 in Washington, DC.

During the public Plenary Meeting for the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) at the National Archives and Records Administration on October 21, 2011, a few very exciting announcements were made that will contribute to the foundation and future of the DPLA.
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In a recent post at danbri.org, Dan Brinkley documents some of his work on NoTube (a European research project exploring Semantic Web and TV), reflects on the possibilities of linking bibliographic data with other web content, and calls for a contest to engage researchers in linked TV and bibliographic data.

Responding to Brinkley’s call via the DPLA listserv, Karen Coyle observes:

“A big and powerful chunk of knowledge organization that is just begging for exploitation is the fact that library records have classification numbers and subject headings from thesauri. All of this could now be correlated with an analysis of the full text. It’s only another step to associate this same information with non-library materials. The classifications have the advantage of being organized knowledge with implicit class membership and lots of interesting sibling relationships. What libraries have is not complete nor perfect, but it’s a seed to be built on, something that doesn’t exist when you do keyword indexing without any semantics.”

Join the conversation by commenting on Brinkley’s post or chiming in on the listserv thread!

The official website for the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) went live on Tuesday, October 4, 2011. Read about this exciting project, and listen to Robert Darnton, director of Harvard University’s library and one of the DPLA’s steering-committee members, explain the mission and goals of the DPLA, at The Atlantic online. Remember, the DPLA Plenary Meeting is open to the public and coming up soon on October 21 at the National Archives in Washington, DC!