OAC History

The Online Archive of California (OAC) is a direct growth of the groundbreaking research by Daniel Pitti and his colleagues at the UC Berkeley Libraries. Between 1993 and 1995, they developed a prototype finding aid standard in the form of a Standardized General Markup Language (SGML) Document Type Definition or DTD. In April 1995, the UC Berkeley finding aid conference announced the results of the initial testing of the standard, then known as the Berkeley Finding Aid Project (BFAP). Received positively by the archival profession, a Bentley Library fellowship supported Pitti's revision of the prototype standard in collaboration with distinguished members of the archival descriptive standards community, including Jackie Dooley, Michael Fox, Steve Hensen and Kris Keisling. In September of 1995, the Society of American Archivists and the Library of Congress assumed control of the development of the standard and the Encoded Archival Description (EAD) DTD was born.

Quickly grasping the importance of EAD for improving access to archival finding aids, Brian Schottlaender, then Associate University Librarian for Collection Development at UCLA, sponsored the first University of California EAD Planning Conference, which was attended by thirty-nine representatives from UC special collections units, the Getty Center, the Huntington Library, Stanford University, and the University of Southern California. From this meeting came three significant outcomes: an agreement to create a union database of EAD-encoded archival finding aids; the formation of the UC-EAD consortium; and an agreement to seek funding from the University of California Digital Library Executive Working Group for the effort. The UC-EAD project secured funding from the UC Office of the President and through a series of Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grants from the California State Library.

Between 1995 and 1997, under the direction of Project Coordinator Charlotte Brown and Project Administrator Brian Schottlaender, the UC-EAD project created a prototype union database of encoded archival finding aids. The effort was largely one of production shop conversion led by the UC Berkeley Libraries and the UCLA Libraries through the development of retrospective conversion guidelines, finding aid boiler plates for collection level data, macros for conversion of container lists, and style sheets for HTML publication of the encoded data. In June 1997, the UC-EAD project received additional funding from the California State Library LSTA program to extend consortium participation to include other California-based repositories. Appropriately, the UC-EAD project was renamed the Online Archive of California to more accurately reflect the eligibility and welcome participation of widespread California archival and manuscript repositories.

In 1998, the OAC was formally integrated into the California Digital Library (CDL) the 11th co-library of the UC system. At that time, Brian Schottlaender assumed leadership of the OAC with his appointment as Senior Associate for Primary Content Development at CDL. Under Schottlaender's leadership and with support from Tim Hoyer, Head of Technical Services at The Bancroft Library, the OAC received additional funding for encoding finding aids from the California State Library's LSTA program and developed two important digital content projects: JARDA (Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive) and MOAC (Museums and the Online Archive of California).

Two primary administrative groups comprising representatives from OAC contributing institutions were formed in 1998. The OAC Steering Committee was formed to advise the OAC on broad issues of content, policy, sustainability, partnership, and scholarship. The OAC Working Group was formed and continues to advise the CDL on issues concerning the administration, operation, and technical development of the OAC and metadata standards relevant to the OAC. A collaborative effort, the OAC program continues to be guided through representative input from community members.

In May 2000, Robin Chandler joined the CDL as the first permanent full-time OAC Manager. Adrian Turner joined the CDL as the OAC Operations Manager in 2002. As of 2006, the OAC is coordinated by the CDL's division of Digital Special Collections under the direction of Rosalie Lack. Through the collaborative efforts of the OACSC, OACWG, and Built Content Operations Group (comprising CDL technical and program staff), the OAC has implemented enhanced search and delivery services, promulgated best practices for encoding finding aids and digital objects, and engaged in an active program of usability testing. During this time, the Library of Congress-funded California Cultures and California State Library LSTA program-funded Local History Digital Resources projects were also launched, the latter which seeks to encourage OAC participation from public libraries throughout California. In 2001, the OAC interface was revised to its current form, integrating finding aids with associated digital content in the search interface.

The OAC administration continues to seek ways to enhance existing OAC functionality through exploring ways to integrate finding aids and associated digital content; enhance and promote end-user access to and use of online collections; promote best practices; and provide new and improved services to assist OAC contributing institutions with participating in the consortium.

For more information about the early history of the OAC, see Charlotte Brown and Brian Schottlaender's "The Online Archive of California: A Consortial Approach to the Encoded Archival Description" (in the Journal of Internet Cataloging 4, no. 3/4 [2001]: pp. 97-112). For additional information about the OAC, please see the associated list of articles.