Harvard is making more than 12 million catalog records from its 73 libraries publicly available under a Creative Commons public domain license, the university announced today. The records can be bulk downloaded from Harvard in the standard MARC21 format, and are available for programmatic access by software applications via API at the Digital Public Library [...]
DPLA, Syracuse, Library Blogs Take Part in SOPA/PIPA Protest
January 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Thousands of websites, from major sites like the social news website Reddit, the Internet Archive’s main site, and the English-language version of Wikipedia, to small personal WordPress blogs, have “gone dark” today as part of a coordinated protest against the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), currently in committee in the House, and the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act (PIPA), scheduled for a Senate vote on January 24. Among the sites taking part are those of Digital Public Library of America and the Syracuse University iSchool, as well as several popular blogs in the library world.
DPLA Chair Palfrey Moving to Andover
November 14, 2011 By Leave a Comment
John Palfrey, a Harvard Law School professor and the vice dean for library and information resources at the Harvard Law School Library, will be moving to Philips Academy Andover as its new head of school as of July 2012, according to announcements from both institutions today.
Charleston Conference 2011: Big Ideas, Big Challenges
November 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment
This year at the Charleston Conference—the annual meeting of academic acquisitions librarians and library vendors held in Charleston, SC, from November 2 to 5—many of the plenary presentations shared a common theme: as libraries face new challenges, new ideas are needed. And as the main speakers and presenters touched on a wide range of issues, it became clear that there was no shortage of new ideas, and opinions, in the library world.
Digital Public Library of America and Europeana Announce Collaboration
October 25, 2011 By 2 Comments
At the Digital Public Library of America plenary meeting on October 21, Europeana program director Jill Cousins announced that Europeana and DPLA have reached a mutual agreement to work toward interoperability, and thus potentially expand content access for users of both projects. In her announcement, she stressed the importance of openness—specifically, open data and open licensing—in digital libraries.
Getting Real About the Digital Public Library of America
October 25, 2011 By 9 Comments
“It’s a real pleasure welcoming you into my house this morning,” said David Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States, to the more than 300 attendees of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) plenary meeting at the National Archives in Washington, DC, October 21. The all-day meeting served as a forum for the major thinkers behind the digital library project, and was the site of several major announcements—including $5 million in funding, and a collaboration with Europe’s key digital library project.
Digital Public Library of America: Pro and Con
October 13, 2011 By 2 Comments
They are miles apart in their thinking about digital books, but the Association of American Publishers’ (AAP) president, Tom Allen, and Harvard University library director Robert Darnton came face to face to discuss the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) on October 11. The occasion was a forum organized by Maurice J. Freedman, publisher of The Unabashed Librarian, and hosted by James Neal, University Librarian at Columbia. Also on hand was the University of California, Berkeley’s Pamela Samuelson, an expert on copyright law.
LJ/SLJ Ebook Summit Panelists Remind Librarians of an Old Creed: Free to All
October 12, 2011 By 1 Comment
The keynote panel at a virtual ebook summit held Wednesday by Library Journal and School Library Journal brought together panelists from three very different sectors of the library world who, nonetheless, found common ground, particularly on the need to ensure equitable access to digital materials.
