Umbra: Building a Subject-based Portal for Searching African American History
The urgency of representing African American history and culture as fully as possible drives Umbra: Search African American History (umbrasearch.org), a freely available search tool that brings together the most extensive digital collection dedicated to African American history and culture from US archives, museums, and cultural heritage institutions. As a discovery platform and call to action, Umbra enables the creation of new works—curricula, scholarship, art of all kinds—that illuminate parts of our history that have not been broadly accessible. Through partnerships, open data, and technology, Umbra is working against centuries of loss and erasure to expand the historical record for students, scholars, and the general public. Currently, over 400,000 digital items are made available from over 500 institutions, many of these drawn from the DPLA’s own aggregated collections using the Open API Codex. This presentation explores the process of pulling together disparate digital resources, including but not limited to DPLA; the processes and challenges of identifying and delivering relevant content; the technologies employed; and the relationships built along that way that make this work possible. Attendees should expect to learn about our own work in building and sustaining this important subject-based portal and to feel inspired to explore other opportunities to build subject-based pathways to discovery.
A Peek in the Portal: The University of North Texas The Portal to Texas History
This presentation with offer a brief look into the digital collections added to The University of North Texas’ The Portal to Texas History in the last year. Examples include projects completed through our Rescuing Texas History Mini-Grant program for 2014, The Barbara Jordan Archives Collection, and the Texas Historical Commission’s Historic Building Negatives Collection among others.
3D Scanning for Small Budgets: How Local Libraries and Museums will Play a Role in Creating a 3D Digital Library
Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) University Library has been digitizing and providing access to community and cultural heritage collections since 2006. Varying formats include: audio, video, photographs, slides, negatives, and text (bound, loose). The library provides access to these collections using CONTENTdm. As 3D technologies become increasingly popular in libraries and museums, IUPUI University Library is exploring the workflows and processes as they relate to 3D artifacts. This presentation will demonstrate Creaform’s Go!Scan 3D scanner while discussing collection digitization for small museums. Presenter will share insight on: key terms and features, access of 3D objects in a CONTENTdm collection, and share costs of 3D scanning.
