The Digital Public Library of America

The Digital Public Library of America

Curation

On his radio show, Kojo Knamdi interviews three people involved in the Digital Public Library of America, a project that focuses on digitizing information from libraries, museums, and archives from around the nation and making them available online. They discuss the mission of the Library as well as the technical aspects of getting institutions to work together, working with copyright law, and the actual digitizing of the millions of artifacts involved. Issues discussed include deciding what to include in digitization efforts, whether to digitize full artifacts or just metadata for reference, how to enrich digitized artifacts with additional data, and how to balance the needs of copyright holders with the mission to make the Library freely available to the public. They also discuss the inspiration of the Google Books project and issues such as access by people with disabilities, public expectations for availability of digital content, quality control, and forward migration of digital information for safekeeping.

It's something of a dream for many: to digitize and make accessible the vast number of books, documents, artifacts, photos, videos, and other materials housed at thousands of different institutions across the country. The Digital Public Library of America is working on making it a reality. We explore a collaboration between libraries, museums, and archives - including the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian - that aims to put it all online.

Nnamdi, Kojo

American University Radio

2011

Polk, Victoria

The Kojo Nnamdi Show. Sound recording. Washington, D.C.: American University Radio. http://thekojonnamdishow.org/.

Sound

http://thekojonnamdishow.org/audio-player?nid=20488

“The Digital Public Library of America.” The Kojo Nnamdi Show. Sound recording. Washington, D.C.: American University Radio, 2011. Windows Media Player. Accessed February 3, 2012. http://thekojonnamdishow.org/audio-player?nid=20488.

The Digital Public Library of America project is a massive undertaking that illustrates the growing expectations of having information available online and the importance Western society is placing on increasing digitization for both access and safekeeping. This project shows that digital archives and repositories are not an afterthought, but rather are moving to the forefront and becoming just as vital as physical collections.