Digital Special Collections

featuring: Calisphere

Users Council Annual Meeting May 11, 2007

Overview • What are digital special collections?

• Where do they come from?

• How does CDL provide access to them?

• Who has access? Who are we targeting?

• What else does DSC do? • The buzz on Calisphere: who’s using it and what are they saying • Strategies for using Calisphere

What are digital special collections?

Images Texts Datasets

photos, drawings, paintings, murals, posters letters, oral histories, reports, scrapbooks statistical data

What are digital special collections?

And coming soon…QTVR (so you can see what’s on the other side of this statue)

Where do the collections come from?

• UC Campuses (archives, libraries, museums, oral history

programs)

• Other educational institutions (private and public universities/colleges, research institutes) • Libraries • Historical societies and centers • Museums • From YOUR institutions! ….in California

Who has access? Who are we targeting?

Everyone has access!

1. K-12 2. UC faculty, students, staff 3. General public That said, we design to meet the needs of specific target audiences.

How does CDL provide access?

Websites

• Online Archive of California (OAC) http://www.oac.cdlib.org

• Counting California http://countingcalifornia.cdlib.org

• Calisphere http://www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu

What’s the difference between OAC and Calisphere?

• OAC is where you go for finding aids • Calisphere is where you go for primary sources (the actual

digitized objects)

Future Plans for OAC • Bring OAC’s rich contextual and biographical info into Calisphere • OAC redesign in 2008 “a face lift for our grand dame”

What else does DSC do?

• Collection development • Provide statistics to our content contributors on usage of their materials • Development – Zooming – Add new format types, e.g., QTVR • Image Service – Coming soon, the UC Shared Image Collection

The buzz on Calisphere… who’s using it and what are they saying • Target audience: K-12 teachers and curriculum developers (also grad students and general public)

What are teachers saying?

• “It sparked ideas for ways to connect the long past with the more recent past with our actual area that we live in” • “[Calisphere images] also all had at least some information about the images.”

How are teachers using it?

“I did not feel that my students really understood the impact internment had on Japanese Americans, so I printed out copies of fifteen different images and information about the images [so] every group of three students could have a set.

The groups studied the images and selected the eight they felt best portrayed the impact, and put them in some order. Each group presented their selections and reasons for them to the class. Then wrote an essay about the impact, referring to at least three images.”

The buzz on Calisphere… who’s using it and what are they saying • New audience: Popular with undergraduates!

Why is it popular with undergraduates?

• Same subjects covered in K-12 are studied in higher education in more depth • Students come from different cultures and may not be familiar with American (or California) History • Easy to find primary sources quickly for that paper due tomorrow – By topic – By time period (timelines are useful for big events)

What subjects are popular?

• American History undergraduate survey class (750 students) – Beats – Hippies – San Francisco – Civil rights – Race, Ethnicity and the law – Labor movements – Immigrants/Migration (Dorothea Lange) – WWII – Science and Technology (post WWII)…dams, buildings, highways – Japanese American Internment – Vietnam War – Sex, drugs, and rock and roll (sorry, nothing to see here!)

Relevant for other disciplines • American Studies • Anthropology • Education • Ethnic Studies • Gender Studies • Humanities & Art • Journalism • Law • Literature • Psychology • Natural Resources • Public Policy • Sociology

Where to start in Calisphere?

Themed Collections or Search?

Themed Collections or Search?

Themed Collections or Search?

Themed Collections or Search?

Themed Collections or Search?

Questions?

[email protected]

Buzz: What’s New in Calisphere?

Before…

JARDA…now

JARDA: sample page