Digital Public Library of American (DPLA) Announces $750,000 Grant From Sloan Foundation to “Make Cultural Treasures Freely Available on Wikipedia”

Here’s the Full Text of a DPLA Announcement:

A $750,000 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to the Digital Public Library of America will fuel a multi-year effort to connect America’s cultural heritage institutions with Wikipedia, the world’s free online encyclopedia. This grant will offer an opportunity to make millions of cultural treasures from hundreds of American libraries, archives, and museums freely available online, including Renaissance manuscripts from Philadelphia’s Science History Institute; historic photos of the Pacific Northwest from Seattle Public Library; and portraits of 18th-century actors from the University of Illinois.

Nearly three years ago, Sloan Foundation funded DPLA to work with the Wikimedia Foundation, the global nonprofit that operates Wikipedia and other free online knowledge projects. DPLA has since shared more than 3 million photographs, documents, and files on Wikimedia Commons, a free online repository of images, sounds, videos, and other media used on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, enabling these resources to be viewed more than 150 million times on Wikipedia. Sloan’s support will allow DPLA to dramatically increase the number of participating organizations and the amount of essential cultural heritage content available on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and related Wikimedia projects.

“The growth of our partnership with the Wikimedia Foundation positions DPLA to more fully realize our mission: free and open access to the cultural and intellectual riches stewarded by libraries, archives, and museums across the United States for the benefit of all,” said DPLA executive director John S. Bracken. “It’s imperative that knowledge gathering isn’t restricted to only those who can travel and see our cultural and heritage treasures in person.”

“We are delighted to continue support for this seminal partnership between two pillars of the Sloan Foundation’s program to democratize knowledge for the benefit of all, DPLA and Wikipedia,” said Doron Weber, Vice President and Program Director at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “With our previous grant, DPLA was able to contribute the largest bulk upload ever made to Wikimedia Commons by a single organization. With this renewed grant, we anticipate a four-fold increase in the number of uploaded files and contributing institutions that will make more of the world’s rich cultural and scientific heritage available to a billion people around the globe.”

“Today, DPLA is one of the largest contributors of images to Wikimedia Commons. Crucially, DPLA adds descriptive structured data to these images, ensuring they are more discoverable for use on Wikipedia,” said Yael Weissburg, the Wikimedia Foundation’s Vice President of Partnerships, Programs, and Grantmaking. “By managing a digital asset pipeline to Commons, DPLA helps to illustrate Wikipedia with high-quality images and make collections visible and relevant to a global community of readers.”

“Libraries and museums strive to be inclusive places of knowledge sharing and they want more patrons to experience and learn from their collections. Sloan Foundation support will allow DPLA to make the collections of hundreds of libraries and museums available on Wikipedia,” said DPLA director of community engagement Shaneé Yvette Willis. “We will be able to increase the reach of our partners, such as the Middle Georgia Archives in Macon, Georgia, whose photo of Christ Episcopal Church now illustrates the Wikipedia page for the Episcopal Church, and Toledo Lucas County Public Library, whose photo of the McKinley Monument illustrates the page of the 25th President.”

“We’re excited to make the historic photos, postcards, and sheet music in our collections accessible for seamless discovery and use by the global community through our work with DPLA and Wikimedia,” said Jason Kucsma, executive director of Toledo Lucas County Public Library.

DPLA’s Wikimedia work is guided by a 10-person Wikimedia Working Group, chaired by DPLA data fellow Dominic Byrd-McDevitt, which includes:

• Meredith Doviak, National Archives and Records Administration
• Eben English, Boston Public Library & Digital Commonwealth
• Christine Fernsebner Eslao, Harvard Library
• Jamie Flood, National Agricultural Library
• Giovanna Fontenelle, Wikimedia Foundation
• Rachel Meibos Helps, Brigham Young University (Mountain West Digital Library)
• Evan Robb, Washington State Library (Northwest Digital Heritage)
• Angela Stanley, Georgia Public Library Service (Digital Library of Georgia)
• Greta Suiter, Ohio University Libraries (Ohio Digital Network)

To learn more about our Wikimedia work and find out how your institution can participate, please join our next Open Board + Community meeting on Monday, January 9, at 2 pm ET. We will also be presenting a Learning Lab on this work at the ALA LibLearnX in New Orleans on January 28.

Source

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