Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society has announced it will research and plan an initiative to construct a “Digital Public Library of America” with funding from the Sloan Foundation.
While the structure and content of the future digital library are unclear, it will be an open, distributed network that represents a consensus of the country’s libraries, universities, archives, and museums, according to a press release. The U.S. archivist, David Ferriero, has already offered to assemble a plenary meeting in the early summer of 2011 to help determine the library’s shape and size.
There are other ongoing efforts similar to the Berkman Center’s initiative to link and centralize already-existing Web resources for the good of students. For example, last July, the U.S. Department of Education announced its partnership with the Smithsonian Institution to create an online-learning registry that unifies all sorts of digital educational resources from federal and federally aligned agencies.
