What happens when archives, libraries and museums come together? They build something amazing.
The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is here, and the National Archives is proud to participate as a leading content provider in this exciting online portal and platform.
The DPLA provides a single online access point for anyone, anywhere to search and access digital collections containing America’s cultural, historical and scientific heritage. Following the successful launch in April 2013, DPLA continues to grow, regularly bringing in new partners and content. For the latest news, check out DPLAfest 2013, happening right now in Boston!
This large-scale collaborative effort to create a universal digital public library has united leaders and educators from various government agencies, libraries, archives and museums. Together with several large content providers, such as the New York Public Library, the Smithsonian, and Harvard University, the National Archives is sharing content from our online catalog in the DPLA.
In fact, the National Archives has already contributed 1.9 million digital copies of historical material, including our nation’s founding documents, photos from the Documerica Photography Project of the 1970’s, World War II posters, Mathew Brady Civil War photographs, and a wide variety of documents that define our human and civil rights.
“WPA Library Bookmobile,” National Archives Identifier 195912
The National Archives’ participation in this exciting project marks a new opportunity to share our content more broadly, open new doors for research and discovery, and engage and connect with users from across the United States and around the world.
We encourage you to browse the DPLA, and see what kinds of treasures you find! For the developers out there, the DPLA’s API and open data policy provides an opportunity to build useful apps and presentations.
Take a look, and see what you can find!
This is terrific! I posted a link to it on my fb page. I found histories of towns, photographs, ancient texts, census maps, and lots of digitized books! I remember hearing about this a few times, but didn’t realize it was ready for prime time. Thanks for posting this!
That’s great news. Now I can have a one-stop place to search for information for my articles.
Thanks for the heads up.
Phil.
This is a treasure trove for everyone involved in researching the fascinating world of their history and ancestry. I for one am glad I found it. Thanks!