The Importance of Interoperability: Lessons from the Digital Public Library of America.

The Digital Public Library of America enables the discovery of digitized content held by the U.S. cultural heritage institutions by aggregating metadata contributed from participating organizations. Significant interoperability issues exist when gathering metadata at a national scale, which the Digital Public Library of America mitigates through use of its metadata application profile. In its latest release, the metadata application profile permits the storage of uniform resource identifiers, helping the Digital Public Library of America make the move to linked open data. This article examines these Digital Public Library of America developments through a case study of the Missouri Hub, which facilitates the aggregation of metadata from Missouri-based institutions into the Digital Public Library of America. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]