The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is an ambitious project conceived around the idea of a shared, national, digital repository. The resource would bring together the aggregated metadata of millions of publically accessible digital objects to the public. Working with eight pilot aggregators, the DPLA is ambitiously working towards a public launch in Spring 2013. The creation of the DPLA will result in the development of one of the largest repositories of free and CC0-licensed bibliographic metadata for digital content. This bibliographic data will provide researchers and library developers the opportunity to explore data mining, relationship building and experiment with linked data concepts. The DPLA represents a next step for libraries looking to move beyond their own walls and venture into the world of truly collaborative collections building. Terry Reese is the Gray Family Chair for Innovative Library Services at Oregon State University (OSU). He is the author of a number of metadata related software packages and libraries like MarcEdit, a MARC/XML metadata software suite and the C# OAI Harvesting package. He has published a number of works on digital libraries and library metadata issues, including co-authoring a book with Kyle Banerjee entitled, Building Digital Libraries: a how-to-do-it manual.

1. Rethinking shared
metadata at the platform
level
Terry Reese
Head, Digital Initiatives
The Ohio State University
Potential impacts of national repository efforts like the Digital Public
Library of America

2. http://dp.la

4. ….to meet the challenge of
re-envisioning library spaces
as a platform for researchhttp://www.cni.org/topics/learning-spaces/the-library-building-as-research-
platform/

5. 100,000 ft view
● Evolving the role of the library from just information provider, to that of a key partner throughout
the research process
● http://dh.crc.nd.edu/sandbox/jstor-tool/
● Greater reliance on webs of data
● And the emergence of services developed from their aggregates
● Identities
● DPLA Map
● We are starting to see the end of boutique development, collections, and local metadata schemas in
the library space
● Standards
● if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. (http://projecthydra.org/)

6. http://experimental.worldcat.org/IDNetwork/display.html?query=lccn-n2007-44146

7. http://inkdroid.org/dpla-map/

8. http://xkcd.com/927/

9. 50,000 ft view
● Libraries as virtual spaces
● And promotion of equity of access
● Blurring of differences between public/private/academic needs
● Libraries are comfortable with silos, let’s own it, and come to terms with it

10. http://librariesoforegon.org/

11. http://mwdl.org/

12. http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/search/?q=libraries+without+walls

13. http://uwdc.library.wisc.edu/

14. 30,000 ft view
● Large data aggregations and partnerships like the DPLA and Europeana will
redefine and change for the better our notions of attribution or licensing of
metadata
● Information doesn’t want to just be free, it wants to be very promiscuous.
● Libraries will largely recognize and adopt crowd-source metadata description
for special and unique collections
● The institution will continue to become more transparent, as aggregations
and linked data create the ability to create exhibits and collections from
multiple sources.

15. http://www.flickr.com/photos/nypl/4058784908/in/photostream

16. http://metadatagames.com/

17. Why is the DPLA Important
● Why is this important?
● The content is interesting, but not the most interesting part – what is most
interesting is
● A large corpus of Metadata released under CC0 license (essentially into the public domain)
● Metadata being used as a platform
● Potential to build new services
● Potential to build new applications
● Pushes libraries to think critically about the partners they work with an how those
partnerships can have impacts downstream
● Potentially, it starts to change the nature of how people interact with the library and it’s
metadata.

18. Questions?