Digital Public Library of America is a free, national digital library that provides a single point of access to cultural heritage materials from more than 4,000 libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. Go to dp.la to search more than 37 million images, videos, texts, and sounds.

Ebooks

Free Ebooks: You can search the catalog of more than 6,000 ebooks and download titles for free directly at freebooks.dp.la.

Educational Resources

Primary Source Sets: The collection of free primary source sets covers a wide range of topics from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women to Negro League Baseball to Angel Island. All include a curated set of primary sources, lesson plans, discussion questions, and tips for primary source analysis.

DPLA Search: Use DPLA’s search to access more than 37 million images, texts, videos, and sounds from the 4,000+ partner institutions across the country. The collection is useful for primary source research and analysis and research projects on almost any topic under the sun as well as creating things like scavenger hunts and games that put a little fun in e-learning.

Online Exhibitions: The collection of online exhibitions can introduce students to more than two dozen topics ranging from the 1918 flu pandemic to Political Outsiders in US Presidential Elections to the building of the Transcontinental Railroad.

For Genealogists

Family Research: We’ve heard from some budding genealogists who are using their extra time at home to dig into their family history. This family research guide is an introduction to using DPLA’s records in your search.

TLCPL and DPLA

The Toledo Lucas County Public Library contributes many of our resources to DPLA through our partnership with the Ohio Digital Network, one of 22 organizations across Ohio to do so. We are also very proud to say that we contribute just under half of the 233,000 records that come from Ohio libraries and archives.

While we try and have the most comprehensive collection possible, many other Ohio or national organizations also have digitized materials about our hometown.

• The Ohio History Connection has a series of photos created by the Federal Writers’ Project including one of the Downtown Toledo skyline in the 1930s.
• Bowling Green State University has a photograph of A. Rensch & Co. at 607 Monroe Street from around 1940.
• The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County has a breathtaking photograph of Madison Avenue in Downtown Toledo.

Moving further afield, many organizations from across America have digitized materials that may be useful to your genealogy or school research, or just for poking around to see what you might turn up.

• Boston Public Library has a number of postcards including this one of the Safety Building from the 1930s or 1940s.
• The Library of Congress has a book of biographical accounts of residents of Toledo and Lucas County from 1895.
• Cornell University in New York has for some reason the 1915 Purple and Gold, the yearbook of Waite High School (though why, I have no idea).

All of these organizations, as well as your Toledo Lucas County Public Library, have separate digital libraries to make our content more accessible. However, it is only by cooperating on big partnership projects like DPLA that these millions upon millions of resources can be found from one simple search box at dp.la.