Learning Lessons from DPLA - The Scholarly Kitchen

"DPLA — the Digital Public Library of America — last week laid off six members of its small staff. Over the weekend, DPLA executive director John Bracken, in a talk at the LITA Forum, provided an overview of DPLA’s vision, which appears to include a change in strategic direction. DPLA is a not-for-profit organization with a strong board including library leaders Brian Bannon of Chicago Public, Chris Bourg of MIT, and Denise Stephens of Washington University St. Louis, Oxford University Press’s Niko Pfund, and Wikimedia CEO Katherine Maher, among others. DPLA launched five years ago, with a strategy focused on aggregating and curating special collections and a technical approach that made sense for the web that was celebrated here in the Kitchen. It now appears to be pivoting more towards ebook distribution systems. It is also clearly facing some difficulties right now...."