The Digital Public Library of America and MWDL
In 2012 the Mountain West Digital Library was selected to be one of the first six service hubs for the Digital Public Library of America. DPLA was launched in 2013 as the national digital library in the United States, offering a single point of public access to millions of items from memory organizations around the country. Digital collections from the Collection Partners of the Mountain West Digital Library are now discoverable nationally through dp.la as well as regionally through mwdl.org.
What does this mean for you?
Partnership with MWDL and DPLA gives your institution's digital collections broader visibility to a national audience.- See increased levels of discovery and use of your collections.
- Expand the breadth of your collections by integrating your collections with other cultural heritage organizations.
- Be part of a trusted, sustained partnership of libraries, archives and museums throughout the U.S.
Key information you should know
- No action is required on your part. If you are a partner with MWDL, your metadata records are automatically harvested into DPLA. (Note: finding aids are not currently harvested into DPLA.)
- Timing: DPLA harvests MWDL metadata quarterly.
- Broad public access to your metadata: Metadata records for your digital items are openly available and searchable on DPLA's public website and through DPLA's Open API. All metadata records available through MWDL (note: just the metadata, not the digital objects being described) are available under a Creative Commons "CC0" license. For more information about DPLA's policies, see these pages:
- Digital Public Library of America Terms of Service, http://dp.la/about/terms-conditions
- Digital Public Library of America Policy Statement on Metadata, https://pro.dp.la/hubs/metadata-application-profile
- Digital Public Library of America Data Use Best Practices