USC Libraries' Digital Collections is helping to create the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), which officially launched in April 2013. As described on its website, DPLA "brings together the riches of America's libraries, archives and museums, and makes them freely available to the world."
The effort starts at the state level with the South Carolina Digital Library (SCDL), chosen to be one of seven pilot hubs for DPLA and awarded funding through grants from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and the Arcadia Fund in the UK to add content to the DPLA. SCDL, which is funded through the South Carolina State Library, Clemson University, College of Charleston and USC, provides free access to historic materials, such as photographs, manuscripts and objects illustrating the state's history and culture from more than 40 institutions across the state. More than 200,000 items have been added to SCDL so far. USC Digital Collections has provided more than half of this content.
"USC Digital Collections will continue to grow and make available the USC Libraries' collections, but SCDL allows us to further our mission by helping make all cultural resources across the state more accessible to the citizens and students of South Carolina," said Kate Boyd, USC Digital Collections Librarian.
"Working with other institutions has allowed collections in separate libraries or archives across the state to be connected virtually, which is amazing to watch," Boyd said. "For instance, College of Charleston, the Charleston Museum and USC have all made their photographs from the 1886 earthquake available through SCDL."
In addition to building the site, creating content for it and maintaining it, SCDL partners help smaller institutions digitize their materials.
"We don't have the resources to do it ourselves, particularly from the technical side of things, so we are very grateful for the help," said Grace Cordial, Special Collections Librarian at Beaufort County Public Library. "We scanned nearly 550 images from a collection of photos featuring truck farming and phosphate mining taken in 1890 to 1910. It provides a close-up look at that industry from the turn of the century. We digitized this collection to create access for everyone, and there was no way we could have done that without the support of USC Digital Collections and the SCDL."
Having all of the state's cultural collections available through one portal vastly increases the discoverability of the items.
"We are stronger as a whole than we are as individual digital libraries," said John White, Associate Dean for Special Collections and Digital Initiatives at the College of Charleston. "And without the hard work and dedication of Kate Boyd at USC Libraries, there may not have been an SCDL. Kate not only coordinated the project in its infancy, but she also established the basic workflows and digitization standards for the whole state. Her impact on digital libraries in South Carolina is immeasurable."
For more information, please visit SCDL at www.scmemory.org.
