“Robert Darnton gave a talk at my institution last week about the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). He presented a progress report, the details of which he has outlined in the New York Review of Books. The first prototype of the DPLA, using technology developed in the project’s “Beta Sprint” competition, should be released in April 2013.
“Darnton’s inspiration is familiar to most academic librarians: publisher greed has turned the public good of knowledge into a private commodity. Rising subscription prices have created an enclosure movement whereby the knowledge commons has become a gated community. The DPLA is envisioned as a ‘mega-meta-macro library’ that would harness the technology of the internet to disseminate and preserve the world’s information for all, and for the ages.”
From L. Braunstein’s post on the ACRLog, Three Cheers and Two Questions for the DPLA