[Libs-Or] Digital Public Library of America

[Jim Scheppke]

Colleagues: By now you have probably heard about the Digital Public Library of America initiative that launched last year at the Berkman Center at Harvard. If you want to learn more about it, I recommend you watch this video by one of the founders, Robert Darnton of Harvard. He gives a good summary of the vision and the planning issues:

http://histsociety.blogspot.com/2011/03/interview-with-robert-darnton-on.html

To learn even more, go to the DPLA wiki site. Just in the past few days they have posted a draft “concept note” that provides more details about what the planners have in mind:

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/dpla/Concept_Note

Along with others, I am pretty uncomfortable with calling this the Digital Public Library of America. Public libraries in the US are having a hard enough time defending their funding right now without having to explain why the DPLA will not make them obsolete in the future. Others have suggested just dropping the ‘P’ from the DPLA. What’s wrong with just having a Digital Library of America that simply adds value to what is already being provided by our local libraries?

This project seems to be picking up a head of steam and may become very important to our future. I hope you will learn more about it, follow its progress, and weigh in if you have an opinion about it.

Jim Scheppke, State Librarian
Oregon State Library
250 Winter St. NE
Salem, OR 97301
503-378-4367
(fax) 503-585-8059
jim.b.scheppke at state.or.us

[cid:3384235830_343188]Go Green, Keep it on screen - think before you print.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://omls.oregon.gov/pipermail/libs-or/attachments/20110329/54407769/attachment.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 1427 bytes
Desc: image.jpg
URL: <https://omls.oregon.gov/pipermail/libs-or/attachments/20110329/54407769/attachment.jpg>