#dpla

Cooking apple butter

To get from one side of the U.S. to the other is to criss-cross a veritable snakes and ladders of state and county-level legislation and policy. If you’re after a particular title by Toni Morrison or Margaret Atwood, you might find that it’s available in Georgia, and effectively banned next door in Florida. A new initiative from the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), launched in concert with the Palace Project, hopes to toss a ladder to people living in places where access is restricted.

The Banned Book Club is a free e-reader app that uses GPS-enabled geotargeting to determine which books are not available in a given area, and upload them to a library. To transcend petty local politics, simply download The Palace app, then select “Banned Books Club” as your “local library.” You will then be able to access all the goodies that someone else has “challenged.”

Executive Director of the DPLA, John Bracken, said in a statement that “book bans are one of the greatest threats to our freedom.” Thus, your local library doing what it can to remedy your rights.

They can’t wrap every state in tin foil, can they!

Labor History for Labor Day

This Labor Day, dig into labor history through DPLA Exhibitions on topics including labor on the World War I home front, the Bread & Roses Strike of 1912, MA's shoe-making industry, and the work of Montana's early settlers! 

View DPLA Exhibitions 

Selected images include:

A 1920 photograph of a shoe shop in Haverill, MA, from Lawrence History Center via Digital Commonwealth and featured in Best Foot Forward: The Shoe Industry in Massachusetts.

“Proclamation! Is Massachusetts in America?,” a 1912 poster from the Lawrence History Center via Digital Commonwealth and featured in Bread and Roses Strike of 1912: Two Months in Lawrence, Massachusetts, that Changed Labor History.  

A postcard featuring a grain threshing machine near Hobson, Montana, from Hobson Library via Big Sky Country Digital Network and featured in Boom or Bust: The Industries that Settled Montana. 

Making Access Happen through the Digital Public Library of America

By David S. Ferriero | Archivist of the United States

Providing public access to Federal Government records is central to the mission of the National Archives. Open access to government records strengthens democracy by allowing Americans to claim their rights of citizenship, hold their government accountable, and understand their history so they can participate more effectively in their government.

Collaboration with stakeholders, the public, and private organizations to make historical records available has long been a priority for the National Archives. It is clear that collaboration is the path to the future, and nowhere is this more apparent than through the efforts of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) to connect people to our nation’s shared history.

DPLA provides a single online access point for anyone, anywhere to search and access digital collections containing America’s cultural, historical and scientific heritage. This collaborative effort has united leaders and educators from various government agencies, libraries, archives and museums of all sizes working together to ensure that all people have access to information they need.

HCL on DPLA!

Hennepin County Library's digital content is now being harvested directly for inclusion in the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). DPLA is an aggregation of the digital content from hundreds of libraries, museums, archives and other cultural institutions. Launched only five years ago, DPLA has grown to include over 20 million digital items.

GIF IT UP 2017 contest will start on October 1st.