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  • Julia 1:55 pm on April 25, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: DPLA, metadata, public libraries, smartphone   

    The Scoop on the DPLA 

    Great article from In the Library with the Lead Pipe on the first weeks of the Digital Public Library of America, and how it affects the library profession.

    I think this is my favorite line:

    “DPLA is not a public library…”

    Well great. Then what is it?

    “The DPLA, in its current incarnation, is primarily a metadata repository that pulls open data from cultural heritage collections at multiple institutions and centralizes it.”

    Okay… I’m on board.

    And here’s a quote from a quote:

    Dan Cohen: “I want the American public to know that the DPLA will be the place to go to find documents and images about their hometown, scanned and curated locally; to be able to pull out their smartphone, launch an app powered by DPLA’s data, and take an impromptu walking tour of the hidden past of their current location; to see the DPLA’s open and free content spread across classes from kindergarten to graduate school; and many other exciting possibilities enabled when formerly disparate collections are knit together—entirely new kinds of searching, discovery, and learning. Forget the massive technical infrastructure; if the DPLA can ignite that wonder that only libraries can provide, we will have done our job” (Enis, 2013).3

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    • Jeff Edelstein 2:54 pm on April 25, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      I followed the DPLA closely as the subject of blog posts I wrote for Josh Hadro’s Info Tech class last semester, and this article does a fantastic job of explaining what it is–I especially liked the clarification of its layers–the portal, the platform, and the partnership.
      One of the posts I wrote focused on the issue of the use of the term “public” in the DPLA’s name as a cause for (unnecessary) concern for public libraries, which this article addresses well. The DPLA is not going to be the place for patron’s to go to download the latest bestseller to their e-readers, and thus will not diminish the value of or need for traditional local public libraries. I hadn’t thought of this before, but maybe the DPLA should instead call itself the Digital *Open* Library of America. Besides, DOLA would be easier to say!

  • Jeff Edelstein 4:19 pm on April 8, 2013 Permalink | Reply
    Tags: DPLA, e-books, publishing   

    Two items in this morning’s New York Times caught my eye. The opinion piece by Scott Turow is a good companion to Prof. Pattuelli’s post about the DPLA. Writers are not necessarily all that happy: The Slow Death of the American Author http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/opinion/the-slow-death-of-the-american-author.html
    The second piece is more of a fun feature: At a Library in Brooklyn, Rare Books and Coffee http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/08/nyregion/at-a-do-it-yourself-salon-in-brooklyn-books-obscure-and-arcane.html?_r=0

     

    • Leigh Hurwitz 3:07 am on May 2, 2013 Permalink | Reply

      It’s encouraging to see NYT paying attention to independent libraries like Mellow Pages (the library covered in the second piece). It calls into question the way we traditionally think of libraries, librarians, and patrons. A library is made of information, and as long as there is information and people who need/want to be immersed in that information, there will be a place for the wide spectrum of library types.

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