Thursday 24 April 2014

A first year for DP.LA, the Digital Public Library of America

On April 18th 2014, the Digital Public Library of America's celebrated its anniversary: a first year of public access on the web.
The DPLA is a platform that connects openly the online contents of many libraries, archives, museums and cultural institutions around the USA into a single portal. Everybody can search this digital library and the digital bookshelf in the DPLA is now made of many thousands of single e-books titles from many different digital library partners in the USA.
From a user's point of view, "DPLA offers a single point of access to millions of items from libraries, archives, and museums around the United States. Users can browse and search DPLA’s collections by timelinemapvirtual bookshelf, and faceted search; save and share customized lists of items; explore digital exhibitions; and interact with DPLA-powered apps in the app library."
The most simple URL ever used on the web "dp.la", is today an expanding digital library offering worldwide access to US open digital humanities culture. "The DPLA Digital Hubs Program is designed to establish a national network out of the over forty state/regional digital libraries and myriad large digital libraries in the US, bringing together digitized content from across the country into a single access point for end users, and an open platform for developers". Because the DPLA also fosters collaboration with independent developers: the "DPLA's application programming interface (API) and open data can be used by software developers, researchers, and others to create novel environments for learning, tools for discovery, and engaging apps".
But the project started in October 2011 at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University, supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation: "Hundreds of public and research librarians, innovators, digital humanists, and other volunteers—organized into six work-streams and led by a distinguished Steering Committee—helped to scope, design, and construct the DPLA." The DPLA is guided by a Board of Directors "comprised of leading public and research librarians, technologists, intellectual property scholars, and business experts" from around the USA and is based in the 19th century building (1848) of the Boston Public Library. Today, former Director of the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University, pioneer Digital Historian Dan Cohen is DPLA Executive Director.  (DPLA staff page and Historical Materials page).
To celebrate the anniversary, the non-profit library network announced six new partnerships with major digital libraries and archives: the US Government Printing Office, the J. Paul Getty Trust, the California Digital Library, the Connecticut Digital Archive, the Indiana Memory and the Montana Memory Project.
Very soon we may think that the DPLA together with  Europeana, the European Digital Library, will form the nucleus of a World Digital Public Library open to everybody in the world accessing the internet. 
Already in November 2011, the "two major digital library networks have reached an agreement to collaborate in ways that will make a large part of the world's cultural heritage available to a large part of the world's population." They both decided to work together to promote the "interoperability" of their meta-data's Early Modern historian, author of The Case for Books, Robert Darnton -at that time member of the DPLA Steering Committee and University Librarian at the University of Harvard- said, "The association between the DPLA and Europeana means that users everywhere will eventually have access to the combined riches of the two systems at a single click. The aggregated databases will include many millions of books, pamphlets, newspapers, manuscripts, images, recordings, 
On 8 February 2013, the Digital Public Library of America released a new version of its Metadata Application Profile (MAP): "This new version is designed to build on the experience of the Europeana Data Model (EDM)" allowing the sharing of the Europeana metadata model"The DPLA and Europeana have also collaborated on a virtual exhibition, exploring the stories of Europeans migrating to the US: Leaving Europe: A New Life in America' exhibition.videos, and other materials in many formats." And Jill Cousins, Executive Director of Europeana, welcomed the agreement, saying that "Europeana was designed to be open and interoperable, and to be able to collaborate with the DPLA is a validation of that aim. By this combined effort on two continents, Europeana and the DPLA hope to promote the creation of a global network with partners from around the world." 
 Looking at this important partnership we may say that more then the digital library contents, the richness and innovative peculiarity of the DPLA project embedded in the semantic Web 3.0, is based on metadata exchange, interoperability of metadata and, above all, on a full Open Access to all the DPLA metadata.
A recent post published by Megan Geuss, staff editor for the blog Ars Tecnica dedicated from 1998 to IT and Digital Technology issues in the USA (Digital Public Library of America to add millions of records to its archive) wrote that "the DPLA says that it has amassed more than seven million digitized items in its archives to date, and in 2013 attracted more than one million unique hits to its website. But the more impressive numbers come from the fact that the digital library made its metadata available to anyone. It reported today that over the year it received nine million hits to its API. Some of the apps that developers have made with the database include “a smartphone app called OpenPics that shows materials from DPLA related to the location where you are standing; a Pinterest-style app called Culture Collage that shows thumbnails of images related to a particular search on an endlessly scrolling page; and an app called FindDPLA that helps Wikipedia editors locate helpful primary sources to cite in their articles.” With third-party apps, the DPLA isn't just a public library, it lets anyone build their own public library to suit their needs."

Monday 7 April 2014

Public History: un nuovo modo di avvicinarsi alla storia? Una giornata di discussione all'Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/123896260
Come definire la Public History ?
Come introdurre la Public History ?
Finora i pochi manuali in inglese che di quest'argomento trattano -e in prospettiva (2015) anche la Oxford Enciclopedia for Public History- si sono limitati ad indagare sul come si fa storia fuori dall'università e con quali pubblici.

La prospettiva è certamente molto vicina alle descrizioni delle pratiche individuali con il passato che le ego-storie hanno messo in mostra spiegando l'itinerario intellettuale degli individui alle prese con il mestiere di storico.

http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/13008269
Le due edizioni del bel libro curato da James B. Gardner e Peter S.La Paglia hanno aggiornato il primo vero manuale introduttiva alla "Public History" pubblicato nel 1986 da Barbara J.Howe e Emory L.Kemp, e sono l'emblema di un approccio personalizzato al campo della Public History.

In quel libro, i Public Historians stessi descrivono le loro pratiche, le loro esperienze personali con la storia, i luoghi dove lavorano con la storia, i media di diffusione che usano per parlare del passato, i pubblici con i quali interagiscono.

Si tratta di definire i "settings" gli ambiti, nei quali si fa storia pubblica, "public history", e di interrogarsi su come si fa storia in quelle dimensioni che non sono quelle tradizionali dell'insegnamento e della ricerca universitaria nella quale si insegna e si pubblica solo per i "pari". I "public historians", che portano fuori dall'accademia i valori professionali che definiscono il mestiere di storico, si propongono altre modalità di pubblicazione e di comunicazione della storia, spesso partecipative. E da questo punto di vista, le possibilità sono molte e diversificate, spesso appassionante, coinvolgenti e gioiose come tenteremo di vedere .durante la giornata Veneziana di qui sotto.

Università Ca’ Foscari
Dottorato in Studi sull’Asia e sull’Africa
Dottorato di ricerca in Storia sociale europea dal medioevo all'età contemporanea
Centro Interuniversitario di Storia Culturale (CSC)

Public History. Un nuovo modo di avvicinarsi alla storia

Martedì 8 aprile 2014 h. 10.00

Ca’ Vendramin ai Carmini, sala A

10.00
Rolf Petri, Presentazione

10.15-11.00
Serge Noiret, Introduzione alla Public History

11.00-11.30
Cécile Franchetti, Un Time travel tra Venezia e Istanbul

11.30-12.00
Emilio Franzina, La comunicazione storica ‘in musica’ (anche) attraverso una
esperienza personale


12.00-12.30 Discussione

12.30-14.00 Pausa Pranzo

14.00-14.30
Vittorio Lora, Teatro, musica e poesia: memorie divise

14.30-15.00
Maria Pia Pedani, Dalla Storia alle storie: la Sultana veneziana

15.00-15.40
Discussione

15.45-16.00
Rolf Petri, Conclusioni