GO DAVID FERRIERO! Quote of the day: I want every stinking piece of this collection digitized,” Mr. Ferriero said. “I want it available to the world 24 hours a day.”
No mere mortal can search across the nation’s rich archival and book databases, and life’s too short and too expensive to fly everywhere. I’ve lived this change as a writer, seeing things get so much easier from 1991 until now, but I can see where this is going, and I’m so eager to get there!
I’m an enthusiastic user of WorldCat — just imagine that in a reader-friendly format, cutting across searches in newspapers and manuscripts as well as books. (Yeah, I know WorldCat does some of that, but it’s a thin layer on top of the mountain of the world’s knowledge.) How I love the Library of Congress’s Historical Newspaper Index, a beautiful interface that has led me to a many a delightful new find.
Then again, I think of poor old Casaubon in Middlemarch, searching for the Key to All Knowledge.
When I finish my book, and Josephine Marcus Earp releases me from her clutches, I will dig deeper into DPLA. And the marketer in me says, KILL THAT DUMB ACRONYM!