IMLS Awards $250,000 to the DPLA for Digital Hubs Pilot Program

From the September 13, 2012 IMLS press release

IMLS Awards $250,000 to the Digital Public Library of America for Digital Hubs Pilot Program

Washington, DC—The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced today a $250,000 grant to support the development of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). The National Leadership Grant for Libraries in the Advancing Digital Resources category will help fund the launch of the DPLA’s Digital Hubs Pilot Program, a project that will take the first steps to bring together existing U.S. digital library infrastructure into a sustainable national digital library system.

“The Digital Hubs Pilot Program is tremendously exciting,” said IMLS Director Susan Hildreth. “At the heart of this effort is a genuine desire to tackle the barriers that reduce access to digital content. I am confident that the DPLA’s generous spirit of collaboration will result in innovations that help to leverage the significant investments institutions have made in digitizing their collections and create greater public access.”

Under the Digital Hubs Pilot Program, the DPLA will partner with existing statewide digital library projects (service hubs) and existing large content repositories (content hubs) to define, test, and implement digital services and participation agreements. Led by DPLA Director for Content Emily Gore, the Hubs Program will establish foundational sites in the DPLA, a distributed national network of connected service and content hubs.

This grant specifically will support the planning and implementation of a regional service hub pilot at the Mountain West Digital Library, including the set up and coordinated rollout of regional digital services, such as digitization services, metadata consultation, data aggregation, repository services, and community programming, as well as related workshops and meetings.

“IMLS’s support for this key piece of the DPLA Hubs Pilot will enable us to work with the Mountain West Digital Library, a regional collaborative, to add content and services and to develop a model for regional collaborative contribution to the DPLA,” said Gore.

The IMLS National Leadership Grant program supports projects that address challenges faced by the museum, library, and archive fields and that have the potential to advance practice in those fields. It funds innovative responses to challenges that have been identified as national in scope.

About the Institute of Museum and Library Services The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 123,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. Through grant making, policy development, and research, we help communities and individuals thrive through broad public access to knowledge, cultural heritage, and lifelong learning. To learn more about IMLS, please visit www.imls.gov.

About the Digital Public Library of America The DPLA Steering Committee, the DPLA Director for Content, and its six working groups, or workstreams, are 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.

IMLS Press Contact 202-653-4630 Mamie Bittner, mbittner@imls.gov

DPLA Press Contact 617-384-9107 Kenny Whitebloom, dpla@cyber.law.harvard.edu