California Digital Library Standards Documents

The CDL has recently adopted several guidelines for the use of standards in its collections and services which it supports and hosts.  Notable among them are guidelines for the creation and encoding of digital objects, and best practices for the encoding of finding aids using the encoded archival description standard.  The documents may be found at the CDL publications page at <http://www.cdlib.org/about/publications/>.

“CDL Digital Object Standard: Metadata, Content and Encoding” states the minimum standards for encoding digital objects to be added to CDL collections.  The document explains the CDL’s adoption of an XML DTD based upon a DTD originally created for the Making of America II project – as a means to encode administrative, structural, and descriptive metadata for the objects.

“Digital Image Format Standards” is a companion document which names CDL standards for the creation of digital image surrogates of primary source materials.  The documents were written by CDL’s advisory working group on Strategic Technology, Architecture and Standards, consisting of digital library experts, faculty, and researchers from throughout the University of California System, and were reviewed widely by CDL partners and experts from the field Together the two pieces replace the earlier CDL Digital Image Collection Standards from 1999.

The “Online Archive of California Best Practices Guidelines Version 1.0: Encoding New Finding Aids Using Encoded Archival Description,” establishes a number of requirements for the consistent creation of encoded finding aids for the Online Archive of California (OAC) [http://oac.cdlib.org/].  The document was produced by the OAC Working Group, under leadership from Bill Landis (UCI), Brad Westbrook (UCSD), and Robin Chandler (CDL).