The Puzzle of Large-Scale Digital Collections: Have We Reached an Inflection Point?

Abstract

Since the debut of digital collections from libraries, archives, and other cultural heritage institutions in the mid-1990s, we’ve searched for solutions to make those collections easily available to researchers. Aggregations and subject-based portals emerged as part of those solutions, with enthusiastic support from federal granting agencies, states, and foundations. Some (California Digital Library, Mountain West Digital Library) have adapted and persisted over time, some are present but less robust (Western Waters), and others are long gone (Colorado Digitization Program, Washington Women’s Heritage). After a quarter-century of investment in digital collections at and across institutions in the United States, we clearly struggle to find sustainable and effective solutions. It’s a fiendishly difficult problem in the absence of other options, such as a federally supported national digital collections program. Significantly, the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) announced publicly on April 3, 2024, that it was seeking a new organizational home for its cultural heritage aggregation program after concluding that it could not sustain the program in its current form. With this announcement, and the debut last summer of JSTOR’s Shared Collections, it’s useful to reflect on whether this new service represents a significant progression in this space, or if it’s more likely that any cultural heritage aggregation in the United States will continue to struggle.