Maura Marx is from the Digital Public Library of America.

Interesting comment from Maura in this session of ‘Are we failing users’ – she said DPLA “think about Developers as users a lot” – something that came up at the Summit pre-event focussed on developers yesterday – think this is really important thing for libraries/archives/museums to take on board.

Maura giving some background to the creation of the DPLA – looking to create “an open, distributed network on comprehensive online resources”. DPLA have been working on how to make something useful and sustainable. Workstreams for technical, legal, economic, governance, users. Spent time recruiting people from cultural heritage as well as education, law, government, technology etc.

DPLA turned down money to digitise a load of content – this is not what it is about – have to change the way libraries work, not about creating a pile of digital stuff.

Lots of meetings and workshops – very open process – which is challenging. DPLA will be ‘launched’ April 18-19  2013. DPLA is about a platform not a ‘portal’ or destination. Encouraging people to build on DPLA platform – getting beyond perception of DPLA as ‘portal’ is a struggle.

DPLA work on metadata built on Europeana work. DPLA statements on metadata:

• The DPLA asserts that metadata are not copyrightable, and that applying a license to them is not necessary.
• To the extent that the law determines a copyright interest exists, a CC0 license applies.
• The DPLA asserts no new rights over metadata at the DPLA level

Digital Hubs pilot project – “taking first steps to bring together existing US digital library infrastructure into a sustainable national digital library systems” – focusing on provision in 7 regions

DPLA has strong emphasis on building Community.