Digitizing Georgia’s Cultural Heritage–interview with DLG associate director and DPLA service hub director Sheila McAlister

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) launched its service and content hubs on April 18th.

Read this interview, “Digitizing Georgia’s Cultural Heritage,” with associate director of the Digital Library of Georgia and DPLA service hub director Sheila McAlister to learn more about the Digital Library of Georgia, and its role as one of the six service hubs for the DPLA project, the first national-scale endeavor to aggregate existing content from state and regional digital libraries to be made searchable from a single portal.

The interview was conducted by Annie Schutte, a consultant for the John S. & James L. Knight Foundation, and originally appeared on the Knight Foundation’s blog Knight Blog.

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The Digital Public Library of America is live!

Take a look: Digital Public Library of America

 

And what can you expect to find initially at the DPLA?  John Palfrey, President of the DPLA Board of Directors, describes the launch:

“On April 18, we will launch the first beta version of the DPLA. In its first iteration, the DPLA will combine a group of rich, interesting digital collections, from state and regional digital archives to the special collections of major university libraries and federal holdings. The DPLA will demonstrate how powerful and exciting it can be to bring together our nation’s digitized materials, metadata (including catalog records, for instance), code, and digital tools and services into an open, shared resource. Imagine the ability to access a vastly larger set of materials than ever before, both through a single web portal and through your local library, which has carefully curated a subset of the national database.”

Several collections from Georgia institutions are a part of this launch, with more to be added over time. These include the Gay Bolling Shepperson photographs from the Atlanta History Center; the Ships for Victory collection from the Brunswick-Glynn County Library (hosted by the DLG); and the earliest known plantation baseball film, from the Walter J. Brown Media Archives at the University of Georgia.

The Digital Library of Georgia is proud to be a member of this endeavor. We will keep you updated as the Digital Public Library of America grows.

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