What the DPLA Can Mean for Libraries - The Digital Shift

"One of the concerns expressed about the planning initiative to create a Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is that its very existence might threaten public libraries. While I credit this fear—no outcome to this initiative could be worse—the DPLA is designed to do precisely the opposite: to establish a platform and resources that will help libraries and other cultural heritage institutions, both public and private, to succeed in a digital era. The DPLA, once built and at scale, can help libraries, archives, and museums in ways that we can foresee and in ways that we can’t, today. The DPLA can help bring materials to people through public, academic, and special libraries. The DPLA can also free up time for librarians to spend more time directly helping people. The DPLA can provide access to code and applications that will do extraordinary things for people through libraries. And the DPLA is already providing an open source platform on which others are developing exciting new applications that will help people in ways we can’t predict today—which is the true promise of a generative platform, much like the web itself...."