[MGSA-L] DPLA, Europeana Launch Joint Virtual Exhibition Detailing Immigration Connections

[June Samaras]

DECEMBER 18, 2012


Digital Libraries / DPLA, Europeana Launch Joint Virtual Exhibition
Detailing Immigration Connections

DPLA, Europeana Launch Joint Virtual Exhibition Detailing Immigration
Connections
By Matt Enis on December 18, 2012 Leave a Comment

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) and Europeana today
announced the official launch of Leaving Europe: A new life in
America, a jointly curated virtual exhibition that tells the story of
European emigration to the United States during the 19th and 20th
centuries.

The exhibition includes digitized photographs, manuscripts,
broadsheets, paintings, letters, audio, government documents, and
other materials from U.S. and European libraries, museums, and
archives, curated to describe the experiences faced by different
groups emigrating from Europe to the United States. Officials said
that the new project helps showcase the potential for ongoing
collaboration between the two digital libraries, as DPLA builds toward
the official launch of its online portal in April 2013.

“By combining forces to show how Europeans began new lives in the New
World, Europeana and the DPLA have demonstrated a principle that goes
far beyond the immediate subject of their exhibition: to build a
successful digital future, we must collaborate on an international
scale,” Robert Darnton, DPLA Steering Committee member and Carl H.
Pforzheimer University Professor and Director of the Harvard
University Library, said in an announcement. “The exhibition
inaugurates an alliance that will multiply the benefits of the
Internet for generation after generation, everywhere in the world.”
Ten institutions worked together to produce the exhibition, which
features over 100 rare digitized items, many of which are being made
available for the first time. Europeana’s contributing partners
included the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the National Gallery of
Ireland, the Jewish Museum of London, the Royal Library of the
Netherlands, the Saxon State Library and the Norwegian Photo Archives.
While DPLA’s contributors included the New York Public Library,
Harvard University, The (U.S.) National Archives and Records
Administration, and the University of Minnesota Immigration History
Research Center.

Key components of DPLA, such as its distributed infrastructure and
freely available metadata, have been modeled on precedents set by
Europeana, which launched in 2008. Europeana now offers integrated
access to over 22 million books, films, paintings, museum objects and
archival documents from some 2200 content providers throughout Europe.

“They’ve done a lot of cool stuff in this space, and this was an
opportunity for us to learn from them both with regard to linked open
data, freely available metadata under a Creative Commons License, but
also more specifically on how to make exhibitions that are interesting
and appealing to a large range of people,” Kenny Whitebloom, DPLA
project coordinator for Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet &
Society, told LJ. “They’ve really honed their process in terms of
making exhibitions.”

Bruno Racine, chair of the Europeana Executive Committee, said that he
was “delighted” with the results of this first joint initiative
between the two groups, “on an eminently trans-Atlantic subject.”
“We share common goals—the free circulation of ideas and knowledge,
dedication to the public good, and we believe that the digital
revolution opens up unprecedented possibilities for exchanges like
this one,” he said in the announcement.

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June Samaras
KALAMOS BOOKS
(For Books about Greece)
2020 Old Station Rd
Streetsville,Ontario
Canada L5M 2V1
Tel : 905-542-1877
E-mail : kalamosbooks at gmail.com
www.kalamosbooks.com
http://kalamosb.alibrisstore.com/
http://www.antiqbook.com/books/bookseller.phtml/kal

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-- 
June Samaras
2020 Old Station Rd
Streetsville,Ontario
Canada L5M 2V1
Tel : 905-542-1877
E-mail : june.samaras at gmail.com