The DPLA and Open Access Initiatives: Characteristics, Collections, Collaboration & the Cultivation of Inquiry-Based Teaching and Learning

From its inception in 2010 to its launch a little over a year ago, the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) has actively engaged partners (like the Digital Library of Georgia), collating digital content for open access to books, images, historic records, and audiovisual materials. This presentation will explore the DPLA platform, its resources and delve into the potential for the DPLA and similar initiatives to be valuable tools supporting collaboration among educators and inquiry-based teaching and learning. Resources from digital repositories offer countless opportunities for collaboration and instruction across disciplines. Encountering archival materials in instruction affords students occasions to develop higher order thinking skills, engage in inquiry-based thinking, evaluate evidence and arrive at informed opinions based on historically relevant perspectives. Digital archives offer librarians and teachers historically relevant resources to enrich lessons, foster creativity in the classroom and maintain research and study guides (i.e. Livebinders and LibGuides). A full discussion of the merits and benefits of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is beyond the time allotted for this discussion. However, the presentation will note how these initiatives allow users to create new applications and contribute to the proliferation of digital resources. Specific points of consideration include how digital surrogates hold the potential to inform students’ general knowledge and life experiences, improve critical thinking skills, support college and career readiness, and contribute to an understanding of information literacy in the digital environment. An annotated list of open source applications, including resources for primary sources and tools for instruction, organization and research, will be available