Robert Darnton Lecture and Discussion ‘The Digital Public Library of America: Current Plans and Future Prospects’

Introduction

Robert Darnton is an American historian and 18th century scholar. He is a Harvard graduate who attained a PhD in History from Oxford. He has written many books and has spent lots of time researching in France. One of his most well known books is: ‘The Great Cat Massacre’ which describes the massacre of Cats by two brothers in France in the 1730’s. As well as being a successful and well known historian he is also the Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor and the Director of the Harvard University Library. Details of his full CV can be found here: http://history.fas.harvard.edu/people/faculty/documents/darnton-cv.pdf

Robert Darnton and the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)

Robert Darnton has been a driving force behind the DPLA and is a member of the DPLA steering committee. The idea behind the DPLA is to create an online digital library of content from research libraries, museum and archives in the United States. It is also to include other types of content, such as unique collections held at American public libraries. Apparently, the idea for getting unique collections digitised from remote public libraries is to have people involved with the project visit public libraries in vehicles that carry digitising equipment. (Robert Darnton believes in the American can-do attitude and you know so do I, after all the whole DPLA project idea would not exist without a large amount of inherent can-do attitude in everyone concerned.)

This event was recorded but it is currently not available online. However, many other videos exist of Robert Darnton talking about the DPLA as shown below: