The newly processed archival collections document an array of important sub-topics such as irrigation, mining, forestry, agriculture, industry, land use, activism, and research. Together they form a multifaceted picture of the natural world and the way it was explored, altered, exploited and protected in California over the twentieth century. Highlights from the collections include the corporate records of Unocal, a major oil company; the papers of Frank Sherwood Rowland, the Nobel-prize winning scientist who discovered the effects of CFCs on the ozone layer; the records of prominent California leaders in the Sierra Club; and materials on the state’s tidelands controversy, with a complete environmental profile of Los Angeles Harbor.

The CDL collaborated with special collections and archives departments at the following institutions to arrange and describe the materials for scholarly use:

• California State University, Chico
• California State University, Fresno
• Humboldt State University
• UC Berkeley
• UC Davis
• UC Irvine
• UC Los Angeles
• UC Riverside
• University of Southern California

The completion of this project is particularly exciting because it demonstrated the success of working collaboratively across universities to uncover a bulk of hidden material. While each institution independently undertook the processing work, CDL hosted tools, training, and a virtual meeting space to promote the exchange of ideas and advance the archival profession’s approach to uncovering hidden collections. The project made significant inroads into what is known collectively as the “archival backlog”—the trove of historical materials at archival institutions across the country that, due to lack of resources, have not yet been made available to researchers.

The project was generously supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, administered by the Council on Library and Information Resources as part of its Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives Program, from 2010-2012.

For more information about Uncovering California’s Environmental Collections, see https://wiki.ucop.edu/display/CLIR.

RecordEXPRESS is a simple web form contributors can use to create a single-level, minimum collection record and immediately publish it on the OAC. Specifically, the utility enables contributors to:

• Quickly fill in a handful of fields to create a collection guide that is compliant with Describing Archives: a Content Standard (DACS, the national standard for archival description).
• Immediately preview and directly publish the guide to the OAC with the push of a button.
• Attach one or more PDF documents to the guide. This may be handy in cases where contributors have detailed listings or inventories of materials in the collection, or a legacy finding aid that has not been encoded in EAD. These PDFs will soon be fully integrated with and searchable in the OAC.
• Obtain an Encoded Archival Description (EAD)-formatted export of the guide, for local use.

RecordEXPRESS was designed for institutions that either do not have the means or resources to easily create EAD- or MARC21-based collection guides, or may have legacy finding aids that are not worth converting into EAD at this time. With this and other services, the CDL is hoping to support institutions with “more product, less process”-based approaches to expose archival and special collections materials that would otherwise be hidden.

View an example of an OAC collection guide created with RecordEXPRESS.

Development of this tool was supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, administered by the Council on Library and Information Resources as part of its Cataloging Hidden Special Collections and Archives Program.

• Filter search results by Time Period, Classification, and Geography
• Choose the number of thumbnails displayed
• Mouse-over to view larger images
• Compatibility with Firefox 5
• ARTstor Mobile for iPad, iPod touch, iPhone
• Batch download to PowerPoint

Note that beginning on August 22, 2011, users will be prompted to register to download images. For more information on registering for an ARTstor account, see the ARTstor Help > Registering web page.

The CDL Digital Special Collections Program is pleased to announce the availability of a new, free service for contributors to the Online Archive of California (OAC) and Calisphere websites: CDL-hosted versions of Archivists’ Toolkit and Archon.

Features

Archivists’ Toolkit and Archon are popular open-source archival data management systems providing broad, integrated support for records and manuscript collections.  They can be used to record information about collection workflows (appraisals, accessioning, processing, and deaccessioning); describe collection items, including digitized objects within a collection; generate print, HTML, and EAD collection guides or “finding aids”; note the physical location of collection items; track reference questions; and more.

Both products offer support for describing and managing archival collections, but each has different features and functionality (see Appendixes 2-3 of this CLIR report on archival management software).

EAD collection guides generated by both tools can be contributed to the OAC.  The Archivists’ Toolkit, in particular, also supports the creation of METS-encoded digital objects, which can also be contributed to OAC and Calisphere.  UC campus repositories may additionally submit these METS to the CDL-hosted UC Libraries’ Digital Preservation Repository (DPR).

Benefits of a CDL-Hosted System

By hosting the backend server and databases, and providing the technical infrastructure for these systems at CDL, we hope to make it easier for contributing members to use them.  Contributors only need to implement the applications’ client software to get started.  Our goals are to provide contributors with more options for getting content to the OAC and Calisphere, and help them avoid the costs associated with creating or hosting these systems locally.

The service currently includes the following support:

• Centralized system and software upgrades
• Data recovery and backup of information about collections
• Technical/database support and user support

For more information about this new service, see the DSC page or feel free to contact Adrian Turner, CDL Data Consultant, at adrian.turner@ucop.edu.

The UC Shared Images program recently revised and published its guidelines for shareable metadata.  Version 2.0 of the "Metadata Submission Guidelines" (MSG) is now available at:
http://www.cdlib.org/inside/projects/image/msg_ucsi.pdf.

The MSG provides image-based metadata specifications for campus visual resource centers and libraries participating in the UC Shared Images program, available through the ARTstor hosting platform.  Through the program, campuses can collaboratively develop image collections and share them across the UC system — reducing redundant effort and costs, and providing a convenient and single point of access to the essential images faculty need for teaching.

Metadata that is consistent with other collection records across UC institutions as well as with other ARTstor collections will improve the integration and discoverability of records within ARTstor.  The specifications are based on the ARTstor Core metadata scheme (and indirectly, the VRA Core schema), and also draws on the Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO) data content standard.

The guidelines were prepared by the Shared Metadata Working Group (SMWG) from December 2008 through March 2009.  A special thanks to all of the SMWG members for their time, effort, and expertise that went into preparing this document:

* Maureen Burns, Humanities, Visual Resources Curator (UCI)
* Jan Eklund, History of Art, Visual Resources Curator (UCB)
* Kathleen Hardin, Library, Visual Resources Curator (UCSC)
* Trish Rose-Sandler, Library, Metadata Analyst (UCSD)
* Susan Stone, Information Services and Technology, Data Services, Museum Informatics Specialist (UCB)

Over 2,000 new digitized primary resources are now available in the CDL’s Calisphere and Online Archive of California (OAC) websites as of September 2008.  The collections offer unique glimpses into California local history, and were assembled by a range of institutions throughout the state:

• Alameda County Library, Dublin Library and the Dublin Heritage Museum
• California State University, Los Angeles. Library
• Fresno County Public Library
• Inglewood Public Library
• Loyola Marymount University
• Mission Viejo Library
• Riverside Public Library
• San Mateo County Library, Brisbane Library
• South Pasadena Public Library
• Yorba Linda Public Library

Digitization work was supported by the U.S. Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act, administered in California by the State Librarian, as part of the "Local History Digital Resources Program" (LHDRP).

The LHDRP is a multi-year (2000-present) statewide program to provide persistent public access to local history digital resources. The project is a collaborative endeavor involving multiple supporting agencies, including the California State Library, Califa, and CDL.  Over 55 public and academic libraries, historical societies, and archives have participated in the LHDRP, and approximately 18,000 images have been made publicly available for the long-term. For more information, see the LHDRP project website.

Approximately, 350 proceedings and papers dating back to 1901 from the records of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) are now available in Calisphere and the Online Archive of California (OAC).

These primary resources documenting California labor history have been made available by the UC Berkeley Institute for Research on Labor and Employment (IRLE) Library.  The documents are available in Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF), a file format that is newly supported within Calisphere and the OAC.  The CDL anticipates offering enhanced support for PDF resources in 2009, including full-text searching across PDF documents (when transcriptions are available).

The project was made possible by a grant from the UC Labor and Employment Research Fund (LERF), which is based in the UCOP Office of Research.  The principal investigator for the ongoing digitization project work is Terry Huwe, IRLE Librarian.  Former CDL eScholarship staff member Dayna Holz provided assistance as a digital library developer to IRLE.  The IRLE Library collaborated with UC Berkeley Library’s Digital Publishing Group to create these new resources, and presented CDL with a pilot opportunity to support the PDF file format in Calisphere and the OAC.

The CDL was awarded $111,000 in grant funding through 2008-2009 from the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) to provide preservation and access services as part of the "Local History Digital Resources Program" (LHDRP).

The LHDRP is a multi-year (2000-present) statewide program to provide persistent public access to local history digital resources.  The project is a collaborative endeavor involving multiple supporting agencies, including the California State Library (CSL), Califa, and CDL.  The CDL publishes LHDRP collections via the Calisphere and Online Archive of California (OAC) websites, and also manages the collections for the long-term in the UC Libraries Digital Preservation Repository.  It additionally provides data consultancy services and coordinates components of the program.  Over 55 public and academic libraries, historical societies, and archives have participated in the LHDRP, and approximately 18,000 images have been made publicly available for the long-term.  In 2008-2009, ten new institutions will be participating in the program:

• American Jewish University, Ostrow Library
• City of Commerce Public Library
• Coronado Public Library
• Escondido Public Library, Pioneer Room 
• Graduate Theological Union Library
• Mills College, F.W. Olin Library
• San Diego State University Library, Special Collections and University Archives
• South San Francisco Public Library
• UC Riverside Libraries, Special Collections Department
• Upland Public Library

The LHDRP is supported by the US Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the LSTA, administered in California by the State Librarian.  For more information, see the CSL LSTA website and the LHDRP project website.

The "CDL Guidelines for Digital Objects, Version 2.0" (CDL GDO) has been updated to include specifications for use of the METS File <file> element.  You can find the updated version at http://www.cdlib.org/inside/diglib/guidelines/ .

The revision applies to Sections 2.1, 2.2.2, 3.1, and 3.2.4 only:

• To support the orderly transmission and ingest of digital objects, the CDL recommends the inclusion of checksum (MD5, SHA-1, or CRC32) and byte size values in the METS File <file> element.  Note that this information is preferred, but not required.
• The subheadings within Sections 2.1 and 3.1 have been relabeled, and are now consistently based on METS element names.

Please contact the CDL at oacops@ucop.edu if you have any questions.

The "CDL Guidelines for Digital Objects, Version 2.0" (CDL GDO) has been updated to reflect modified requirements for METS unique identifiers.  You can find the updated version at http://www.cdlib.org/inside/diglib/guidelines/ .

The revision applies to Section 3.1 only, and pertains to objects submitted for the CDL’s "Enhanced Service Level”.  This service level encompasses the presentation of digital assets via CDL websites. It is also sufficient for increased preservation services in the UC Libraries Digital Preservation Repository.

The METS top-level <mets> tag must contain an OBJID attribute containing an ARK identifier for the digital object.  Previously, the CDL GDO indicated that the OBJID attribute could contain a unique local identifier in lieu of an ARK identifier.  CDL systems do not support this scenario, however, for objects submitted for the Enhanced Service Level only.

Please contact the CDL at Digital Special Collections (oacops@cdlib.org) if you have any questions.