Building a Ten-Campus Digital Library Collection at the University of California

Notes: View the community notes Google doc for this session.

Session Type: Project Update

Session Description The University of California (UC) Libraries and the California Digital Library are nearing the conclusion of an ambitious project to build a shared system for creating, managing, and providing access to unique digital resources across ten campuses (see http://bit.ly/UCLDC).

The platform we are creating will have three major components: 1) a shared digital asset management system for librarians to centrally add and edit digital files and metadata, 2) a metadata harvest for digital resources hosted on external platforms, and 3) an integrated public interface so end-users can seamlessly search across these disparate resources. Together, these components will provide critical infrastructure for the UC Libraries to more efficiently, economically, and collaboratively manage and surface digital content. We will also be leveraging this platform to participate in the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), and we are investigating the possibility of extending it to facilitate participation in DPLA by additional libraries, archives, and museums throughout California.

This session will build on a “Community Idea Exchange” poster presentation from the 2013 Forum—at which point we had just begun the project—to describe in more depth the components of the platform and the technologies employed, as well as challenges to and changes in our approach since we embarked. One of the more interesting aspects of our technology stack is that we have opted to license and customize a vendor product for the digital asset management system with which the digital library community may not have much familiarity (Nuxeo, http://www.nuxeo.com/), and in this session we will discuss our experiences with it. We will also describe how our project and our platform will connect with other initiatives, most notably the DPLA, and may provide a piece of the technical infrastructure needed for institutions across California to share their respective digital resources.

Session Leaders

Sherri Berger, California Digital Library Brian Tingle, California Digital Library