On April 18, 2013, the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) was launched. This resource is a collaboration of 40 major organizations and resulted from the vision of a free national library that gained support in the early 1990s.  DPLA includes digital materials from sources such as HathiTrust, Harvard, NARA, the Internet Archive, The Smithsonian Institution, New York Public Library, and Open Library, as well as many other partner institutions.  The DPLA brings "different viewpoints, experiences, and collections together in a single platform and portal, providing open and coherent access to our society’s digitized cultural heritage.”

The DPLA website informs users that included in the millions of digital items are photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more—from libraries, archives, and museums around the United States. Users can browse and search the DPLA’s collections by timeline, map, format, and topic; save items to customized lists; and share their lists with others.

These resources are curated by the partner institutions and the board of the DPLA, and many items are in the public domain. This is definitely a resource worth consulting when searching for primary sources and other information on a wide variety of topics.