On April 18, 2013 the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) formally launched.
Tomorrow, DPLA celebrates its first birthday.
Congratulations to Founding Director, Dan Cohen and the entire DPLA team.
At the bottom of this post are several infoDOCKET posts from DPLA’s first year including one that looks at the cool, useful, and our favorite new DPLA feature since it launched, the DPLA EBook Bookshelf.
We’re also including a link to a video recording (and slides) of a recent presentation about DPLA that Dan Cohen gave at OCLC HQ in Dublin, OH.
First Birthday News: More Content and Content Hubs
Here’s a look a bunch of very impressive announcements being made today that are already or will soon provide DPLA users with a lot more wonderful content from a number of superb content providers.
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library (NYPL) this week expanded access to the full breadth of its digital collections through its partnership with DPLA, a major increase over its initial contribution of 14,000 records at DPLA’s launch. Over 1 million digitized items from throughout the Library’s research holdings are available, significantly increasing DPLA’s offerings by nearly 20%.
New Content Hubs
California Digital Library
In this role, CDL will be sharing metadata records from Calisphere a website with approximately 250,000 digital primary source objects contributed by libraries, archives, and museums across the state. Additionally, CDL will be exploring new avenues for aggregating metadata records hosted outside of the Calisphere platform, and sharing those records with DPLA.
Connecticut Digital Archive
The Connecticut Digital Archive (CTDA) is a service of the University of Connecticut Libraries, in partnership with the Connecticut State Library.
The CTDA will provide public access to digital resources related to Connecticut, and contributed by Connecticut-based institutions through a new Connecticut History Online portal launching in Fall 2014.
The J. Paul Getty Trust
Through its partnership with DPLA, The Getty Research Institute will aggregate metadata to its rare and unique collections in art history and visual culture including books from the 15th through 21st centuries, rare and documentary photograph collections, manuscripts, prints, sketchbooks, architectural drawings, artist papers, and archives that provide perspectives on artistic production. It will also contribute metadata from the Getty Research Portal, which aggregates metadata for thousands of digitized art history texts from a growing number of art libraries from across the United States.
The U.S. Government Printing Office
Through this partnership between GPO and DPLA, the public will be able to access the growing collection of Government documents provided by GPO. Examples include: the Federal Budget, laws such as the Patient Protection and AffordableCare Act, Federal regulations and Congressional hearings, reports and documents.
Indiana Memory
Indiana Memory is a collaborative effort of Indiana libraries, archives, museums and other cultural institutions that provides free access to digital collections reflecting Indiana’s heritage from the earliest fossil records to present day. Collections encompass a wide variety of 360,000 unique digital materials such as correspondence from the early Northwest Territorial government officials, Civil War soldiers’ portraits, Indy 500 photographs and memorabilia from the Mercury space program as well as reflections of everyday life through historic newspapers, oral histories, letters home from soldiers, and family photographs.
Montana Memory Project (via Mountain West Digital Library)
The Montana Memory Project provides access to digital collections and items relating to Montana’s cultural heritage and government. These collections and items document the Montana experience.
Many of these items are digitized copies of historic material, and some items are contemporary. All serve as a resource for education, business, pleasure, and lifelong learning. The Montana Memory Project is a statewide project of the Montana State Library and the Montana Historical Society Research Center, and it is participating in DPLA via the Mountain West Digital Library, which itself is a Service Hub.
Want to Become a DPLA Content Hub?
DPLA is announcing today that they’re lowering the threshold for prospective content hubs to join the project. As of today the number of items is 200,000 down from 250,000.
“By lowering the Content Hub threshold to 200,000 items, we hope to establish more direct partnerships with large content holders among America’s libraries, archives.” said DPLA Director of Content Emily Gore.
Some DPLA Accomplishments: Year One
- tripled the size of its collections, jumping from 2.4 million items to over 7 million;
- pulled in materials from over 1,300 organizations, up from 500 at launch
- attracted over 1 million unique visitors to its website and over 9 million hits to its API (application programming interface)
- added new and innovative third-party apps to its growing App Library;
- launched an innovative book-browsing interface for its 1.6 million books, serials, and journals
- received more than $2 million in grant funding from major American foundations and donors, including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation public libraries, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and an anonymous supporter.
See Also: DPLA Content Partners (by Number of Records in Database)
Four Interesting DPLA Apps
These apps are about making content from DPLA easily accessible.
1. FindDPLA
Used with Wikipedia
2. EBSCO Discovery Service & DPLA Highlights
A widget to access DPLA content from EDS.
3. DPLA Search Widget
Put a DPLA search box and just about any page.
4. DPLA Discovery
“… provide multiple discovery interfaces in javascript that can be used in any website.”
Review All of the Apps in the DPLA App Library
A Selection of DPLA Posts from infoDOCKET
- A Quick Look at the Growth of Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) Content Since April 2013 (December 13, 2013)
- DPLA Launches Super Cool Ebook Bookshelf (October 24, 2013)
and from Library Journal...Librarians Respond to DPLA Launch (by Matt Ennis; April 19, 2013)
About Gary Price
