Grants

Digital Public Library of America, Inc.

To build and expand a centralized Wikimedia engagement program that will make 15 million culturally rich digital files from 1000 member institutions from DPLA available on Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and related sites

  • Amount $750,000
  • City Boston, MA
  • Investigator John Bracken
  • Year 2022
  • Program
  • Sub-program Special Initiatives

This grant provides funding to expand a collaboration between the Digital Public Library of America, a national library composed of some 5000 member libraries, archives, and galleries across the country, and Wikipedia, the largest encyclopedia ever created. Launched with Sloan Foundation support in 2019, the collaboration allows the upload of digital files from DPLA member institution into Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia’s archive of more than 60 million video, photo, and audio files.Since the collaboration began in 2019, 200 DPLA member institutions have uploaded more than 3 million files into the Commons. Funds from this grant support the expansion of this partnership, resulting in an anticipated five-fold increase in the number of participating DPLA members from 200 to 1000 and an estimated 15 million files uploaded to the Commons. Initial estimates predict that this upload will generate 15 million page views per month, a substantial increase for Wikimedia and an unprecedented boost for DPLA and its participating members.Grant funds will support the creation of a pipeline to more efficiently facilitate continued contributions by DPLA member institutions; marketing and outreach to DPLA network members to raise awareness and solicit new project partners; onboarding of new DPLA hubs to the pipeline; hosting of training workshops and other support to contributing institutions; making necessary software and technical upgrades to accommodate uploads of partner content; developing new reporting tools; and engaging in outreach to the Wikimedia community.The project will make DPLA the first national aggregator whose content will be systematically ingested into Wikimedia Commons, reaching millions of people and establishing a pathway to further access to tens of millions of media files for the benefit of anyone on the web. 

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