Digital Public Library of America adds content from the University of Southern California

The University of Southern California has added 267,148 items from the USC Digital Library to the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA). The DPLA now has over 2.8 million images including the recent addition of more than 5,000 new images from the David Rumsey Map Collection. The USC Collection includes photographs, text documents, moving images, and digital audio, all of which are now accessible to the DPLA’s global audience of scholars, students, and public researchers.

Many of the items will have specific interest to genealogists. Quoting from the press release:

The USC Libraries’ collections will bring a new, diverse set of perspectives on California to the DPLA’s holdings. For example, more than 100,000 Works Progress Administration census cards reveal economic and sociological data on pre-WWII Los Angeles and its residents, as well as deep details on the census process and census workers—including statistics on their education levels, health, and income. 

The DPLA has a ways to go before it catches up with some of the really large online digital record sources, but it has already acquired some valuable sources.