Visit the Digital Public Library of America

About the DPLA:

The Digital Public Library of America brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. It strives to contain the full breadth of human expression, from the written word, to works of art and culture, to records of America’s heritage, to the efforts and data of science. DPLA aims to expand this crucial realm of openly available materials, and make those riches more easily discovered and more widely usable and used, through its three main elements: a portal, a platform and public opinion.

Visit the DPLA

and check out these and other exhibitions:

The History of American Public Libraries

http://dp.la/exhibitions/exhibits/show/history-us-public-libraries

 

 

 

Maps in American Culture

http://dp.la/exhibitions/exhibits/show/maps-in-american-culture

Introducing the Open Music Library!

The Open Music Library is a new initiative from Alexander Street to build the world’s most comprehensive open network of digital resources for the study of music.

Curated by a community of music scholars, students, teachers and librarians, the Open Music Library brings together peer-reviewed journal articles, books and music scores from the world’s digital collections.

Leveraging shared ontologies, linked open data and principles of the semantic web, the Open Music Library integrates disparate digital collections and establishes meaningful links between the items they hold.


By aggregating, enriching and integrating valuable primary and secondary sources, the Open Music Library aims to not only advance the state of the art in music knowledge discovery, but also increase opportunities for creative reuse, and promote new possibilities for research and collaboration.

Visit the Open Music Library

E Pluribus Unum, an American National Song, Arranged by Edward Pendleton

 

NYPL Image Collections now in the Public Domain!

From the New York Public Library's Website:

Today we are proud to announce that out-of-copyright materials in NYPL Digital Collections are now available as high-resolution downloads. No permission required, no hoops to jump through: just go forth and reuse!

Thank you NYPL for making these available. 
 
Oh, by the way, the concept of the Public Domain is a artifact of the Western legal tradition.

Go enjoy some free images, like these, to make your blog look cooler.

Partying like it's 1799!

The Met's Open Acces for Scholarly Content

The Metropolitan Museum of Art is offering rights-cleared access to over 400,000 digital images of objets d'art in their collection. 

Works that are covered by the new policy are identified on the Museum’s website (http://www.metmuseum.org/collections) with the acronym OASC. Like this one:

Mary Cassatt's The Barefoot Child

And yes, they have works that are not the product of Western Civilization. Because we should enjoy them as well. 

Read the full announcement here:

OASC was developed as a resource for students, educators, researchers, curators, academic publishers, non-commercial documentary filmmakers, and others involved in scholarly or cultural work. Prior to the establishment of OASC, the Metropolitan Museum provided images upon request, for a fee, and authorization was subject to terms and conditions.
Additional information and instructions on OASC can be found on the Museum’s website at http://www.metmuseum.org/research/image-resources/frequently-asked-questions.

The civilization most concerned with property rights is also concerned about sharing the results of creative work. Because Western Civilization should be shared and celebrated.

Image credit: http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/377420