The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) map that is. A new online project, the DPLA’s goal to provide access to archival materials from across the country. You won’t have to know the address for Davidson’s archives or the state portal for Georgia or a small public library in Wisconsin to find wonderful images, letters, newspapers and more. The DPLA site also has creative tools to allow users to make photo montages, use timelines and develop new approaches to research.
Photograph of Frank Baker from the Archibald McKeithen scrapbook the Davidson College Archives
This image can be found by anyone searching for violins – they don’t have to know that Davidson College has an 1916 photo with a student carrying a violin case. It’s one of several hundred of our images and texts that are now part of the DPLA. The best part of this –for the Around the D folks– is that we didn’t have to do any extra work. Since we were already a part of DigitalNC and they are now a DPLA hub, our materials were there and ready to go from a state-wide portal to a national one.
We will be working on more items to add to DigitalNC and the DPLA as well as to the Davidson Archives and Special Collections website. For example, we recently discovered 12 issues of a Charlotte newspaper – Beasley’s Weekly. We have those issues because the paper published parts of William Ardrey’s diary but they also contain local news and stories about World War II events.
These issues of Beasley’s Weekly will be microfilmed as part of a statewide newspaper project
Although we recently acquired some gently used digitization equipment for converting slides, videos and even LPs, newspapers are beyond our scope. We’ll take these to DigitalNC so they can add them to their newspaper project and then we can add them back to our website.
New (to us) digitization equipment
Davidson (college and town) has a rich history. The Archives and Special Collections staff are grateful to all the individuals and offices that have sent their records our way. And we’re grateful for technologies that allow us to share this history with current student through class projects and with people around the world.
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