Georgetown students can now channel the Library of Congress without heading to Capitol Hill with the April 18 launch of the Digital Public Library of America, a free online library resource for the American public.

DPLA, funded through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Arcadia Fund and a variety of government grants, contains over two million items, including library collections and archival collections from historical societies and museums. DPLA’s catalog contains photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images and more.

Among its partners are Harvard University, the New York Public Library and the Smithsonian Institution.

DPLA Assistant Director for Content Amy Rudersdorf stressed the difference between DPLA and subscription-based resources such as EBSCOhost, which the university uses. While sites like EBSCOhost consist of solely electronic books and journal entries, DPLA also features images and other multimedia content in addition to written text.

In addition, Rudersdorf said that DPLA should not be used merely as a search tool but can lend its software to other applications.

“We’re not just a place where you go to search in a box like Google but make the data available for folks who know how to use it through [application programming interface] to build programs and apps on top of it,” Rudersdorf said.

For example, one of the unique features of DPLA’s online database is its exhibits function. It allows users to sift through primary sources that relate to a specific topic, much as a museum exhibit features sources that pertain to a subject.

Rudersdorf expressed confidence that DPLA would appeal to a wide audience, citing the wide range of content available.

“It’s kind of grandiose to say that it’s meant for anyone who wants to use it, but it really is,” Rudersdorf said.

Despite said features, Associate University Librarian for Scholarly Resources and Services Sem Sutter said he did not think DPLA would change the way students access material online. Due to copyright laws, DPLA cannot include content published after 1964. Depending on specific provisions, some works published between 1873 and 1964 are also excluded.

“I don’t think it will have a huge effect because of the kind of material that’s in it,” Sutter said, “It doesn’t really duplicate, for example, current print books or journals, or for that matter, current e-books, current online journals.”

Theology professor Ariel Glucklich agreed and said he was unsure about DPLA’s potential impact on the student body.

“Here, students [already] have access to the online resources that our library has, in addition to other libraries in the network,” Glucklich said. “The biggest impact would be on people not enrolled in universities that don’t have that kind of access.”

In addition, Glucklich said that online services such as DPLA and EBSCOhost would not significantly affect traditional library usage.

“The thing about libraries is that most books are not available online yet,” Glucklich said. “You still have to go to the library and find the book, so whenever one needs a book, you’re still going to need the library,” Glucklich said.

Although Georgetown is not a current DPLA partner, Sutter said that Georgetown would consider participating in the future.

“It’s something we might look at eventually,” Sutter said. “It’s just launched.”

Specifically, Sutter said the university would focus on its own digitization project, Digital Georgetown, for the time being. Digital Georgetown digitizes student publications, faculty theses, dissertations and other content. It also features a digital lecture hall with podcasts and other streaming media.

According to Sutter, Digital Georgetown has similar aims to DPLA.

“It’s still a fairly young thing, and we’re trying to build content, but we might eventually be interested in sharing some of these things … with DPLA,” Sutter said.