Lafayette College Libraries surpasses 10,000 resources contributed to the Digital Public Library of America

As of the new year, Lafayette College has contributed 10,111 digital resources to the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), an all-digital library hub that to date has aggregated more than 52 million records from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions across the United States. Researchers and educators can peruse DPLA digital exhibits and find curated, themed primary source sets drawn from DPLA resources to use as teaching aids in their classrooms for free.  This work supports emerging and established pedagogical trends in history and related disciplines such as primary source literacy and historical empathy, and provides the digital raw materials for educators to increase their students’ understanding of how artifacts, archival records, and material culture provide information about the past.

The milestone comes as Lafayette College Libraries enters its fifth year as a DPLA contributor. Our involvement began in mid-2020 after the launch of the Lafayette Digital Repository on the Samvera Hyrax open source platform. Ongoing participation in this project makes a selection of Lafayette Libraries’ digital collections discoverable to a broader audience within the PA Digital regional DPLA hub, nationally, and globally. Lafayette has shared digitized items from Special Collections & College Archives, such as selections from the College’s extensive collection of prints related to the Marquis de Lafayette, as well as photographs documenting institutional and regional history. Student publications and images from enduring faculty-library collaborative digital projects such as the East Asia Image Collection are also among  the resources shared. With many new digital collections currently being developed to mark the College’s upcoming Bicentennial and the 200th anniversary of the Marquis de Lafayette’s visit to the United States, the Libraries will continue to partner with initiatives including DPLA to maximize their discoverability and use.