UC Shared Images:
Collection Policy

Maintained by Digital Special Collections

Version 1.0
May 2009
Reviewed and Updated Semi-Annually

1. Context

The University of California Shared Images in ARTstor (UCSI) project is one of three services that the California Digital Library’s (CDL) Digital Special Collections Program is committed to supporting, the others being the Online Archive of California (OAC) and Calisphere.  Calisphere and the OAC feature publicly-accessible, unique or rare, cultural heritage materials for UC faculty, students and staff and for K-12 teachers and students and California citizens.

UCSI, restricted to UC campuses that license ARTstor, focuses on pedagogical images for instruction and study. This collection policy serves as a framework for developing collections collaboratively with a distributed network of UC campus partners. Building on the collective strength of ten UC campuses functioning like one university, UCSI allows UC campuses to strategically develop image collections and share them across the University of California system, thereby reducing redundant effort and providing a convenient, single point of access to the essential images needed for study and teaching.

UC institutions may submit collections to both UCSI, and to Calisphere and the OAC, as long as the collections fall within the parameters outlined within the two separate collection policies.

2. Objective

UCSI consists of images that serve as the basis for teaching and learning on UC campuses or the anticipated curriculum and research interests of UC faculty and students.  UCSI features born-digital and digital surrogate images as well as original photography, which are held, curated, or maintained by the UC contributing institution.

UCSI’s objective is to provide UC academic and administrative units, archives, libraries, museums, and visual resources collections with a workflow to contribute images to a UC system wide institutional collection hosted in ARTstor. One of ARTstor’s primary objectives is to provide ongoing and persistent access to a large and expanding library of digital images.  UCSI is also committed to providing long-term access to the collections that it hosts in ARTstor.  UCSI is only accessible to UC institutions subscribing to ARTstor. 

3. Why Contribute to UC Shared Images in ARTstor?

Benefits

• Provides UC system wide access to individual UC campus digital image collections.
• Facilitates use of images for instruction and enhances their scholarship potential by integrating image holdings in UCSI.
• Builds UC image collections strategically and collaboratively in order to facilitate resource sharing, increase efficiencies for users and contributors, and to advance interoperability, reduce redundancy, and minimize costs.
• Provides restricted access through ARTstor’s authentication system for copyright compliance.
• Contributes to a rapidly growing collection of images, descriptive data, and management/presentation tools (including ARTStor’s Offline Image Viewer), and ongoing technological development.
• Co-locates UC images with licensed images in ARTstor to facilitate search and retrieval, and provides cohesive interface to search across, access, manage, and present personal, institutional, and core ARTstor image collections.
• Ensures a basic level of uniformity in the structure and encoding of content as well as to promote efficient ingest procedures.
• Takes advantage of CDL's services for the long-term management of your institution's digital assets
• Leverages access to ARTstor and UCSI training, documentation, usage statistics, and productivity tools.
• Expands grant opportunities through partnership with the CDL.
• Anticipates future needs and trends.

Obligations of contributors

• Agree to make your collections accessible through UCSI in ARTstor.
• Observe the UCSI and ARTstor specifications.
• Assume responsibility for the quality and accuracy of contributed data.

4. Who Can Contribute

UC campus academic units, archives, libraries, medical centers, medical research units, museums, organized research units, special collections, or individual faculty and staff members may contribute collections via the UCSI Collection Development Liaisons.

We are not accepting content from outside the UC system at this time.

5. What Can be Contributed

Image collections are developed to increase the scope and depth of the visuals necessary for teaching and research in a full range of academic subject areas on UC campuses.  Priority is given to current instructional needs of faculty, students, and staff with collection managers making curatorial decisions to supplement collections to facilitate research, to anticipate new programmatic needs, to fill content gaps, and to include donated image collections.  In order to avoid redundancy, it is expected that ARTstor’s core collections as well as collection release information -- in addition to UCSI documentation about upcoming collections to be sent to ARTstor -- be reviewed prior to contribution.

5.1.  Subject Matter and Forms/Genres of Materials

UCSI consists of images (born-digital or digital surrogates) and their descriptions. These images are from collections held, curated, or maintained by UC campuses. 

This policy does not restrict collections based on thematic or subject areas at this time.  Priority should be given to images necessary for current instructional needs. 

Collections that wholly or significantly constitute the following forms/genres of primary, secondary, or derivative resources are out of scope, although discrete images from these items might be considered: 

• 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 image-based file formats are supported by ARTstor at this time:

• TIFF
• JPEG
• GIF
• QTVR

UCSI is committed to supporting newer file formats over time, in accordance with identified and anticipated needs of primary audiences and the ability of ARTstor to support new technology.

Metadata for digital objects submitted to ARTstor should be prepared according to the UCSI Metadata Submission Guidelines (MSG). 

5.3.  Copyright and Access Restrictions

Content submitted to ARTstor should belong to one of the following four categories:

• The content is in the public domain
• The copyright is held by the submitter
• UC 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

ARTstor is presently exploring the possibilities of cross-institutional resource sharing and public access for public domain materials, in addition to copyrighted materials when appropriate permissions have been obtained.  In the light of such future developments, contributions to UCSI can be tagged for varying levels of access:  UC campus only, UC system wide, all ARTstor subscribers, or public (see the rights access element of the MSG).

6.  Retention and Removal

Because UCSI is committed to providing long-term access to the collections that it hosts in ARTstor, institutions should only consider removing 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 ARTstor for hosting