NEH Supports DPLA Technical Workshop

anne — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 14:53:15 +0000

June 10, 2011—Cambridge, Mass.—The Open Knowledge Commons (OKC) has received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support the first meeting of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) Technical Workstream, which will explore and make recommendations around a proposed technical architecture for the DPLA.

The goal of the Technical Workstream meeting will be to begin to make recommendations for the overall technical architecture of a DPLA and to converge on a set of key technical principles upon which the DPLA will be built. Participants will explore existing technologies as possible components or platforms for DPLA; map out key decisions that will be foundational to DPLA’s technical architecture; and explore how best to integrate the results of the ongoing DPLA Beta Sprint into future technical development.

Approximately 25 technical experts from the library community, members of the DPLA Steering Committee, and other advisors will meet in Washington, DC on June 14 to begin to address and prioritize next steps. An early goal of the technical workstream is to scope out requirements for a functional prototype for indexing and providing access to distributed collections. This prototype will serve as proof of concept for the DPLA and the basis for future efforts toward the construction of a large-scale digital library.

About Open Knowledge Commons
The Open Knowledge Commons (OKC) works to make the record of human knowledge as broadly available as possible. We envision development of a “knowledge commons”—a distributed, interoperable universal access digital library of information that may be queried, combined, annotated, mined, manipulated and shared to extract new information. Our efforts today focus on bringing the printed materials in library collections to the Internet under terms that support the knowledge commons vision.

About the National Endowment for Humanities
The National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) is an independent grant-making agency of the United States government dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this release do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Contact

Open Knowledge Commons: Maura Marx, Executive Director, maura(at)knowledgecommons(dot)org