{"id":7156,"date":"2013-03-05T15:42:47","date_gmt":"2013-03-05T20:42:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/?p=7156"},"modified":"2013-03-05T15:42:47","modified_gmt":"2013-03-05T20:42:47","slug":"press-the-digital-public-library-of-america-me-and-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/2013\/03\/05\/press-the-digital-public-library-of-america-me-and-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Press: The Digital Public Library of America, Me, and You"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Twenty years ago\u00a0Roy Rosenzweig<\/a>\u00a0imagined a compelling mission for a new institution: \u201cTo use digital media and computer technology to democratize history\u2014to incorporate multiple voices, reach diverse audiences, and encourage popular participation in presenting and preserving the past.\u201d I\u2019ve been incredibly lucky to be a part of that mission for over twelve years, at what became the\u00a0Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media<\/a>, with last five and a half years as director.<\/p>\n

“Today I am announcing that I will be leaving the center, and my professorship at George Mason University, the home of RRCHNM, but I am not leaving Roy\u2019s powerful vision behind. Instead, I will be extending his vision\u2014one now shared by so many\u2014on a new national initiative, theDigital Public Library of America<\/a>. I will be\u00a0the founding executive director of the DPLA<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“The DPLA, which you will be hearing much more about in the coming months, will be connecting the riches of America\u2019s libraries, archives, and museums so that the public can access all of those collections in one place; providing a platform, with an API, for others to build creative and transformative applications upon; and advocating strongly for a public option for reading and research in the twenty-first century. The DPLA will in no way replace the thousands of public libraries that are at the heart of so many communities across this country, but instead will extend their commitment to the public sphere, and provide them with an extraordinary digital attic and the technical infrastructure and services to deliver local cultural heritage materials everywhere in the nation and the world.<\/p>\n

“The DPLA has been in the planning stages for the last few years, but is about to spin out ofHarvard\u2019s Berkman Center for Internet and Society<\/a>\u00a0and move from vision to reality. It will officially launch, as an independent nonprofit,\u00a0on April 18<\/a>\u00a0at the\u00a0Boston Public Library<\/a>.\u00a0I will move to Boston with my family this summer to lead the organization, which will be based there. It is such a great honor to have this opportunity.<\/p>\n

“Until then I will be transitioning from my role as director of RRCHNM, and my academic life at Mason. Everything at the center will be in great hands, of course; as anyone who visits the center immediately grasps, it is a highly collaborative and nonhierarchical place with\u00a0an amazing staff<\/a>\u00a0and an especially experienced and innovative senior staff. They will continue to shape \u201cthe future the past,\u201d as Roy liked to put it. I will miss my good friends at the center, but I still expect to work closely with them, since so many critical software initiatives, educational projects, and digital collections are based at RRCHNM.\u00a0A search for a new director will begin shortly. I will also greatly miss my colleagues in Mason\u2019s wonderful\u00a0Department of History and Art History<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“At the same time, I look forward to collaborating with new friends, both in the Boston office of the DPLA and across the United States. The DPLA is a unique, special idea\u2014you don\u2019t get to build a massive new library every day. It is apt that the DPLA will launch at the Boston Public Library\u2019s McKim Building, with those potent\u00a0words carved into stone above its entrance: \u201cFree to all<\/em>.\u201d The architect Charles Follen McKim rightly called it \u201ca palace for the people,\u201d where anyone could enter to learn, create, and be entertained by the wonders of books and other forms of human expression.<\/p>\n

“We now have the chance to build something like this for the twenty-first century\u2014a rare, joyous possibility in our too-often cynical age. I hope you will join me in this effort, with your ideas, your contributions, your energy, and your public spirit.<\/p>\n

“Let\u2019s build the Digital Public Library of America together.”<\/p>\n

From Dan Cohen’s personal blog<\/em>,\u00a0The Digital Public Library of America, Me, and You<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Twenty years ago\u00a0Roy Rosenzweig\u00a0imagined a compelling mission for a new institution: \u201cTo use digital media and computer technology to democratize history\u2014to incorporate multiple voices, reach diverse audiences, and encourage popular participation in presenting and preserving the past.\u201d I\u2019ve been incredibly lucky to be a part of that mission for over twelve years, at what became […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5324,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1919],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5324"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7156"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7156\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7158,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7156\/revisions\/7158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/dplaalpha\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}