Dan Cohen, Digital Public Library of America, featured President’s Program speaker, 2013 ALA Annual Conference

For Immediate Release
Tue, 04/09/2013

Contact:

JoAnne M Kempf

Director, Governance Office

Executive Office (EXEC)

1-800-545-2433 ext.3212

jkempf@ala.org

CHICAGO - Dan Cohen, founding executive director of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) will be the featured speaker in the ALA President’s Program & Awards Presentation at the 2013 ALA Annual Conference, 3:30 - 5:30 p.m. on Sunday, June 30. Cohen will focus on the role and contribution of the DPLA to ALA President Maureen Sullivan’s ongoing initiative, “The Promise of Libraries Transforming Communities.”

Cohen will offer an introduction and overview of the recently launched DPLA (called by Nicholas Carr “the Library of Utopia” in MIT Technology Review), how it came to be and what it offers to librarians and the communities they serve. The ambitious enterprise offers great promise to libraries of all types, enabling open access to millions of books, articles, photographs, historical documents, objects and artifacts. Its goal is “to realize the promise of the Internet for the advancement of sharing information and of using technology to enable new knowledge and discoveries in the U.S.”

After Cohen’s presentation, Sullivan will conduct an interview and moderate a Q&A with the audience.

Recently appointed to his position, Cohen was formerly the director of the Roy Rozenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. He is co-author with Roy Rozenzweig of "Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving and Presenting the Past" and recipient of the 2011 Frederick G. Kilgour award from ALA. His blog is at http://www.dancohen.org/.

 

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