Good morning,

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University is pleased to announce two exciting news items about the Digital Public Library of America:

[1] Sloan Foundation and Arcadia Fund Announce Funding for the Digital Public Library of America
The Sloan Foundation and Arcadia Fund today announced a major contribution for the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) in the form of combined $5 million in funding. The DPLA Steering Committee is leading the first concrete steps toward the realization of a large-scale digital public library that will make the cultural and scientific record available to all.
Announcement: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/7158

[2] Digital Public Library of America and Europeana Announce Collaboration
Two major digital library networks have reached an agreement to collaborate in ways that will make a large part of the world’s cultural heritage available to a large part of the world’s population.  The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), which will provide access to digital collections from libraries, museums, and archives in the United States, announced today that it will design its technical structure in a way to promote interoperability with that of Europeana, which has developed a similar system to link the major libraries, museums, and archives of Europe. 
Announcement: http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/node/7159

The full announcements and more information can be found below and on the Digital Public Library of America's website: http://dp.la/

And, as always, we welcome your feedback.

Amar Ashar
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Harvard University

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Sloan Foundation and Arcadia Fund Announce Funding for the Digital Public Library of America

Washington, DC—The Sloan Foundation and Arcadia Fund today announced a major contribution for the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) in the form of combined $5 million in funding. The DPLA Steering Committee is leading the first concrete steps toward the realization of a large-scale digital public library that will make the cultural and scientific record available to all.

Doron Weber, Vice President, Programs at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and Peter Baldwin, Chair of the Donor Board at the Arcadia Fund, made the announcement at the DPLA plenary meeting today in Washington, DC. The funding—split equally between Sloan and Arcadia—will support an intense two-year grassroots process to build a realistic and detailed workplan for a national digital library, the development of a functional technical prototype, and targeted content digitization efforts. Sloan has previously committed one million dollars towards the establishment of a DPLA Secretariat at the Berkman Center and to support the legal workstream of the DPLA initiative by developing solutions to copyright law obstacles facing public digital library initiatives.

“We are delighted to join with the Arcadia Fund in giving the DPLA a major boost towards its intensive, two year effort to create an open, distributed digital public library system,” said Weber. “This is a grand vision for a network of comprehensive online resources, tools, and services that will inform, educate, and empower everyone in the United States and eventually link us with the rest of the world. But we cannot do it alone and invite other funders to join us in this historic undertaking.”

"What Carnegie did for public libraries a century ago, the DPLA could—if successful—accomplish for our era,” said Baldwin. “We are delighted to be part of launching that effort."

“We are excited to begin work on the DPLA as a full‐blown, hard‐driving initiative that promises to transform the world of libraries and the way that we meet the information needs of communities in America,” said John Palfrey, Chair of the DPLA Steering Committee. "We are deeply grateful to the Sloan Foundation and the Arcadia Fund for their support."

The DPLA is a collaborative effort that relies on inputs from a diverse range of stakeholders and community members. Those interested in getting involved can learn more about the project at http://dp.la.

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About the Digital Public Library of America
The DPLA Steering Committee is leading the first concrete steps toward the realization of a large-scale digital public library that will make the cultural and scientific record available to all. This impact-oriented research effort unites leaders from all types of libraries, museums, and archives with educators, industry, and government to define the vision for a digital library in service of the American public. The DPLA Secretariat is located at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University; the Steering Committee comprises library and foundation leaders across the nation. More information can be found at http://dp.la.

About the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, founded in 1934, makes grants for research and education in science, technology and economic performance. A major goal of Sloan’s program in digital information technology and the dissemination of knowledge is to foster public access to information and knowledge for the benefit of all. To this end, Sloan has previously supported the Library of Congress, the Internet Archive, LYRASIS, Wikipedia, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, the Boston Library Consortium, and the Espresso Book Machine. More information can be found at http://sloan.org.

About the Arcadia Fund
Arcadia's mission is to protect endangered culture and nature. It works to document near extinct languages, protect rare historical archives, and to preserve ecosystems and environments threatened with extinction. Arcadia has been heavily involved with digitization projects as well, in conjunction with Harvard, UCLA, the Israel National Library and the Hill Foundation. More information can be found at http://www.arcadiafund.org.uk/.

Contact:
Rebekah Heacock
Project Coordinator
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
rheacock@cyber.law.harvard.edu

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Digital Public Library of America and Europeana Announce Collaboration

Washington, DC—Two major digital library networks have reached an agreement to collaborate in ways that will make a large part of the world’s cultural heritage available to a large part of the world’s population.  The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), which will provide access to digital collections from libraries, museums, and archives in the United States, announced today that it will design its technical structure in a way to promote interoperability with that of Europeana, which has developed a similar system to link the major libraries, museums, and archives of Europe. 

Robert Darnton, a DPLA Steering Committee member and University Librarian at Harvard, said, “The association between the DPLA and Europeana means that users everywhere will eventually have access to the combined riches of the two systems at a single click. The aggregated databases will include many millions of books, pamphlets, newspapers, manuscripts, images, recordings, videos, and other materials in many formats.”

Jill Cousins, Executive Director of Europeana, welcomed the agreement, saying that “Europeana was designed to be open and interoperable, and to be able to collaborate with the DPLA is a validation of that aim. By this combined effort on two continents, Europeana and the DPLA hope to promote the creation of a global network with partners from around the world.”

Another outcome of this collaboration will be a virtual exhibition about the migration of Europeans to America. The DPLA and Europeana will demonstrate the potential of their combined collections by digitizing and making freely available material about the journey from the Old World to the New. This pilot project will include text and images about the experience of the uprooted as they abandoned their homes to seek a new life thousands of miles across a treacherous ocean. Letters, photographs, and official records open up unfamiliar views into the harsh world inhabited by Europeans from the shtetl communities of Russia to the peasant villages of Ireland. And equally vivid testimonies illustrate the culture shock and hard lot of the immigrants after their arrival. Everyone in the United States, including Amerindians, descends from immigrants, and nearly everyone in Europe has some connection with migration, either within Europe itself or across the ocean. All will be invited to stroll digitally through this rich exhibition.

A Statement of Common Principles: DPLA-Europeana

The Digital Public Library of America and Europeana share a common goal: to make the riches of libraries, museums, and archives available, free of charge, to everyone in the world. They will be guided in this mission by the following principles.

1. They will make their systems and data interoperable to the greatest possible extent.
2. They will promote open access to the greatest possible extent through joint existing and new policies concerning content, data, and metadata.
3. They will collaborate regularly in developing specific aspects of their systems, beginning with:
   • an interoperable data model
   • a shared source code
   • cooperative collection building.

About the Digital Public Library of America
The DPLA Steering Committee is leading the first concrete steps toward the realization of a large-scale digital public library that will make the cultural and scientific record available to all. This impact-oriented research effort unites leaders from all types of libraries, museums, and archives with educators, industry, and government to define the vision for a digital library in service of the American public. The DPLA Secretariat is located at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University; the Steering Committee comprises library and foundation leaders across the nation. More information can be found at http://dp.la.

About Europeana
Europeana brings together the digitized content of Europe’s galleries, libraries, museums, archives and audiovisual collections. Currently Europeana gives integrated access to 20 million books, films, paintings, museum objects and archival documents from some 1500 content providers. The content is drawn from every European member state and the interface is in 27 European languages. Europeana receives its main funding from the European Commission. More information can be found at http://www.europeana.eu/portal/.

Contact:
Rebekah Heacock
Project Coordinator
Berkman Center for Internet & Society
rheacock@cyber.law.harvard.edu

Jonathan Purday
Senior Communications Advisor
Europeana
jonathan.purday@bl.uk