The Digital Public Library of America is a new platform that provides open, free access to materials from America’s libraries, archives, and museums. With interactive tools such as a timeline and a map, the entire collection can be searched.
DPLA’s goal is to introduce cultural and historical materials to a broad Internet audience and to make the process of researching and learning about cultural heritage easier. This is accomplished through three elements:
- A portal that helps students, teachers, scholars, and the general audience find a variety of materials at any library or museum in America. The portal provides innovative ways to search through a federated collection of millions of items, including timeline (chronological search), map, format, and subject.
- A platform that enables new ways to utilize digital cultural heritage. With APIs and open data, software developers can create new tools and applications for teaching and research.
- Shaping public opinion. The ability to access materials through free public libraries has always been a central part of American culture, shaping generations of thinking and engaged citizens. DPLA plans to continue shaping critical intellectual space through its activities.
Tools
Timeline and map are tools that can be used to explore and search a database.
Timeline
The timeline is an interactive timeline that shows the number of materials and the materials themselves for any selected period. You can also see in which year and how many materials are available for the word you are searching for.
Map
The map works on the same principle as the timeline, but now the search results are visualized in geographical space. The map is interactive and can be zoomed.
Applications
DPLA encourages researchers and developers to create apps that could be used for educational and outreach purposes. There are currently two apps on the site: an interactive tool to visualize the DPLA collection and an app to make searching the collection even easier.