Digital Special Collections
Collection Policy: Collection Descriptions and Digital Objects

Maintained by Digital Special Collections

Version 1.0
February 2009
Reviewed and Updated Semi-Annually

1. Overview

The California Digital Library (CDL) Digital Special Collections program directly supports University of California's (UC) mission of teaching, research, learning, and public service.  It serves UC libraries, archives, and museums and non-UC institutions.  It supports their mission of providing public access to unique cultural heritage materials.

As a resource aggregator, the Digital Special Collections program is committed to supporting its contributors' local collection policies.  It must also maintain its own collection policy to maintain the following objectives:

• Ensure a basic level of uniformity in the structure and encoding content that it manages
• Advance interoperability among digital content from diverse institutions
• Promote efficient ingest procedures
• Support the orderly management of digital content
• Facilitate access to digital content by users
• Minimize costs

1.1 Scope

This policy serves as a framework for developing collections managed by the Digital Special Collections program, for display in the Calisphere and Online Archive of California (OAC) websites.  Calisphere and the OAC feature publicly-accessible, unique or rare, cultural heritage materials that serve as the basis for historical studies, analysis, and interpretation in accordance with identified and anticipated curriculum and research interests of its primary audiences, including faculty, students (university and K-12), teachers, and California citizens.

The websites seek to address the following types of primary audience activities, in particular:

• Calisphere
  
• K-12 curriculum and lesson plan development
• General undergraduate student research

• OAC
  
• Historical research
• Archival reference work

We reserve the right to work with institutions to identify the most appropriate website (i.e., Calisphere or the OAC) for displaying that institution's content. 

1.2 Out of Scope

UC Shared Images

This policy does not cover collections submitted by institutions to the UC Shared Images (UCSI) program.  Only UC institutions may contribute to UCSI.  UCSI primarily comprises system wide shared image collections used for instructional purposes, only accessible to UC institutions subscribing to ARTstor.  UCSI features born-digital and digital surrogate images of cultural heritage materials and original photography, primarily related to the arts, architecture, and humanities, which may or may not be held, curated, or maintained by the UC contributing institution.  UC institutions may submit collections to both Calisphere and the OAC, and to UCSI, as long as the collections fall within the parameters outlined within the two collection policies.

Other CDL Programs

The policy additionally does not cover collections hosted by the following CDL programs:

• UC Libraries Digital Preservation Repository (DPR)
• eScholarship Repository

Institutions interested in submitting content solely to these repositories should consult these programs' websites.

2. Terminology

The following terminology is used throughout this document:

• EAD collection description: A "finding aid," guide or inventory to a collection held in an archive, museum, library, or historical society, electronically formatted using the Encoded Archival Description (EAD) standard. Finding aids provide a detailed description of a collection, its intellectual organization and, at varying levels of analysis, material within the collection.
• METS digital object: An entity in which one or more content files (i.e., a file that is either born digital or created by converting analog, original objects into digital files -- image, text, and audio files are examples) and their corresponding metadata (i.e., structured information about an object, such as a description of its features, copyright information, etc.) are united, using the Metadata and Encoding Transmission Standard (METS).

For more information, see the CDL Glossary.

3. Why Contribute to Calisphere and the OAC?

Benefits

• Promote and extend online public access to your institution's collections via the Internet.
• Leverage CDL's repository services for the long-term management of your institution's digital assets.
• Access CDL training, documentation, and productivity tools.
• Enhance the scholarship potential for your institution's clientele through the integration of repository holdings in Calisphere and the OAC.
• Obtain usage statistics for your collections.
• Expand grants opportunities through your partnership with the CDL.

Obligations

• Agree to make your collections accessible through Calisphere and the OAC.
• Assume responsibility for maintaining EAD collection descriptions and METS digital objects.
• Observe the CDL's specifications for EAD collection descriptions and METS digital objects contributed to Calisphere and the OAC.
• Comply with legislation concerning fair use and copyright use restrictions.

4. Who Can Contribute

• UC institutions: All campus libraries, special collections and archives, and museums may contribute collections.  Campus academic units, medical centers, medical research units, organized research units, or individual faculty and staff members may not directly contribute collections; these departments and individuals should contact their local campus library, archive, or museum in order to submit collections to Calisphere or the OAC.
• Non-UC California institutions: Established academic, public, and private libraries, special collections and archives, historical societies, and museums within the state of California.

EAD collection descriptions and MARC records for collections and items (harvested from Melvyl® by CDL on a periodic basis) are supported from all UC and non-UC California institutions.  METS digital object collections are also supported, but will be assessed for hosting on a case-by-case basis, based on compliance with this policy and CDL resources and capacity.  Please contact us for more information.

We are not accepting submissions from non-California institutions at this time.  We will investigate ways to integrate collection descriptions and digital objects from regional, national, and international repositories, as appropriate.

5. What Can be Contributed

5.1. Subject Matter and Forms/Genres of Materials

Calisphere and the OAC feature collection and item descriptions, and born-digital or digital surrogates, for primary source collections and museum artifacts which are held, curated, or maintained by UC and non-UC cultural heritage institutions in California.

This policy does not restrict collections based on thematic or subject areas at this time.  This policy may be modified in the future to emphasize particular thematic or subject collecting areas, in order to meet the needs of the primary audiences of our services.

Significant forms/genres of materials represented include: graphic materials such as photographs, artwork, maps, and architectural and engineering records; print and manuscript textual documents, such as letters, diaries, oral histories, legal and financial records, and scientific logbooks; electronic records; sound records; artifacts; and ephemera.

Collections that wholly or significantly constitute the following forms/genres of primary, secondary, or derivative resources are out of scope.  These items may be submitted if they are components within the context of a larger primary source collection (e.g., scattered pre-publication materials included within a larger archival collection, constituting the personal papers of an author):

• Pre-publication materials, journals and peer-reviewed series, postprints, and seminar papers *
• Critical editions *
• Active journals and newspapers *
• Theses and dissertations *
• Federal and state government publications (e.g., periodicals, administrative and statistical reports, fiscal publications, legislative reference works, census records)

* Some of these forms/genres of materials may be eligible for hosting by the CDL's eScholarship Publishing Program.  We recommend that you contact the eScholarship Publishing Group for additional information.

5.2. Digital Content Formats

The following digital content formats are supported at this time:

• EAD collection descriptions
• MARC collection and item descriptions from Melvyl® (harvested by CDL on a periodic basis)
• METS digital object collections:
• Image-based METS digital objects (TIFF, JPEG, and GIF)
• Text-based METS digital objects (TEI, PDF, or imaged text)

The CDL is committed to supporting newer file formats over time, in accordance with identified and anticipated needs of Calisphere and OAC primary audiences.

All EAD collection descriptions must conform to the OAC Best Practice Guidelines for Encoded Archival Description, Version 2.0 (OAC BPG EAD).

MARC collection and item descriptions are harvested from Melvyl® based on a set of documented specifications.

All METS digital objects must conform to the "Enhanced Service Level" specifications described in the CDL Guidelines for Digital Objects, Version 2.0 (CDL GDO).

A CDL Digital Special Collections staff member can consult with you on implementing strategies and open-source based tools to meet CDL specifications. Even if your institution currently does not utilize EAD or METS, we can help you identify effective options for generating content based on these standards. The CDL also maintains a number of online resources to assist contributing members.

5.3. Associated Collection Descriptions

We prefer, but do not require, that all digital objects submitted to Calisphere and the OAC are part of a larger primary source collection and that each digital object contain a reference to that collection.  The reference may take the form of a unique identifier (such as a URL to an EAD collection description, web site, MARC record, etc.) or may constitute the formal title for the collection.  For more information about encoding collection-related information in digital objects, see the CDL GDO, Section 3.2.1 (see also Appendix C for instructions on linking digital objects to collection descriptions).

5.4. Copyright and Access Restrictions

Your institution must have rights to submit collections to Calisphere and OAC for online display. These rights should belong to one of the following four categories:

• The content is in the public domain
• The copyright is held by the submitter
• The library has obtained permission from the copyright holder to deposit the object
• The submission is an exercise of the depositor’s rights of use under Sections 107 (Fair Use) or 108 (Reproduction by Libraries and Archives) of the U.S. Copyright Act

We strongly encourage institutions to provide available information about copyright owners and other restrictions in the metadata associated with digital objects, as specified in the CDL GDO.  (For our general Calisphere and OAC copyright statement and conditions of use policies, see the Calisphere and OAC websites).

All EAD collection descriptions and METS digital objects featured in Calisphere and the OAC are made publicly accessible by the CDL.

5.5. Non-Exclusive Rights

The CDL does not impose exclusive publication rights to collections that it hosts in Calisphere and the OAC.  Institutions may submit collections to other service providers.

6. Fees

There is currently no cost for CDL hosting of collections in Calisphere and the OAC.  The CDL is investigating cost-recovery models for hosting of METS digital objects from non-UC institutions, however, and fees may apply in the future for hosting of new collections.

7. Retention and Removal

The CDL is committed to providing long-term public access to the collections that it hosts in Calisphere and the OAC, and utilizes the Archival Resource Key (ARK) specification to support the persistent identification of individual EAD collection descriptions and METS digital objects.  We will work with institutions to remove public access to materials on a case-by-case basis for the following reasons:

• Resource is in violation of copyright
• Resource contains encoding or formatting errors that causes display problems
• Resource was inadvertently submitted to the CDL for hosting