Northfield and the Digital Public Library of America

The Digital Public Library of America ( http://dp.la/)  was launched on April 18 and includes digital collections from institutions like the Smithsonian, the National Archives, Library of Congress and the Minnesota Digital Library (which will serve as a “digital hub” for our region).  Instead of being a repository, the DPLA will be more of an “aggregator” of existing digital content and part of a movement to further digitize other special collections in the U.S.  The purpose of the DPLA is to bring together all of the riches of America’s libraries, archives, historical societies and museums and make them available to everyone for free. Initial funding of $5 million comes from the Sloan Foundation, the NEH and others.

 How does Northfield fit into the grand scheme of things?  The Northfield Historical Society has been submitting digital items to the Minnesota Digital Library (Minnesota Reflections) for some time now. A current search in DPLA for “Northfield, Minnesota” yields 792 hits.  It’s exciting that our little town is a part of this big effort.

 

On a side note, the Northfield History Collaborative, (of which the Northfield Library is a member) founded in 2007, began with a similar vision – digitizing and making accessible the records of Northfield history.  There is some overlap of what’s on the collaborative website (http://northfieldhistorycollaborative.org/)  and the Minnesota Reflections site (http://reflections.mndigital.org/).  

Check out all of these great websites for Northfield, Minnesota and U.S. history.