Projects
DSC has taken on a number of projects to grow the OAC, Calisphere, and UC Shared Images collections; bring on new contributors; explore opportunities for developing and implementing new technologies; and much more.
Current projects
Uncovering California's Environmental Collections
This is a multi-institutional project to catalog thirty-three previously inaccessible collections of documents, photographs, and other rich archival material related to California's environmental history. The two-year project is funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and administered by the Council for Library and Information Resources.
The Local History Digital Resources Project (LHDRP) provides a “solution in a box” for libraries across the state seeking to become conversant with developing digital primary resource collections. The project is 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. Each year, a group of institutions select, scan, and catalogue approximately 200 items for inclusion in the OAC and Calisphere and publication on local websites.
CDL Hosted Archivists’ Toolkit / Archon Service
DSC will be testing and assessing our capacity to host the Archivists' Toolkit and Archon archival management systems, for use by OAC contributors. By hosting one or both of these applications, we will provide a technical infrastructure for institutions that do not have the capacity to host the backend databases locally.
Audio/Visual Working Group
This working group is preparing specifications for audio/visual file formats that can be supported in OAC and Calisphere, as well as the UC Libraries Digital Preservation Repository. The group is also developing functional requirements for delivering those file formats in the OAC and Calisphere. DSC anticipates being able to stream audio and video in 2010. Members of the group include DSC and Digital Preservation Program staff, in addition to two consultants from the UC libraries: Gary Handman (UC Berkeley) and David Seubert (UC Santa Barbara).
Past projects
In July 2009, DSC released a total redesign of the OAC interface informed by user feedback and community input. The new site helps researchers navigate the collections, contains several new features, and aggregates MARC and EAD records in the same system.
California Cultures is a curated collection in Calisphere. It was created in response to H.R. 1905, an appropriation from the US Congress through Library of Congress’s American Memory program, which made funds available to digitize materials relating to the state’s ethnic groups. The collection is drawn from Calisphere’s content and also features more than 20,000 specially digitized primary sources from charter contributors. It documents California’s rich history of diversity and multicultural contributions.
“New Frontiers in the Digital Library: Social and Ecological Diversity of the American West” was a multi-year, grant funded project to create a virtual collection drawing from the resources of major libraries, archives, and museums. The collection was assembled and a prototype site created. In addition, research into automation of clustering and classification was conducted, a date normalization utility created, and an OAI harvesting structure implemented for the CDL.
The Japanese American Relocation Archive (JARDA) is a digital thematic collection in Calisphere that documents the experience of Japanese Americans in World War II internment camps. Starting in 1998, the University of California has digitized thousands of images and documents on this subject, providing a single, easy-to-use entry point for anyone interested in this material.
Counting California
The Counting California web site provided users with a single interface for accessing a variety of data and statistics about California from local, state, and federal government agencies. It was decommissioned June 5, 2008.
Image Service Demonstrator Project
The Demonstrator Project was a development initiative and precursor to UC Shared Images. Using Luna Insight software, it built a demonstrator online service for the purpose of supporting research and teaching in the arts, humanities, and other disciplines that use surrogate images of works in architectural and the visual arts.
Museums and the Online Archive of California (MOAC)
In 1997, several California museums approached CDL with the idea of integrating access to collections of art, historical artifacts, photography, and manuscripts from museums, archives, and libraries throughout the state. With support from the Institute for Museum Library Services, the MOAC collaboration addressed several goals: testing the use of EAD for museum metadata to provide access to museum objects, integrating primary source materials access across institution types (libraries, archives and museums), and integrating item level description with collection level description.
