Message-Id: <199612161709.LAA19482@library.wustl.edu> Date: Mon, 16 Dec 1996 09:05:12 PST From: mailto:dpitti@LIONHEART.BERKELEY.EDU> Subject: Califoria Digital Image Access Project Available To: mailto:IMAGELIB@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
California Heritage Digital Image Access Project
The Library and the Bancroft Library at the University of California,
Berkeley, are pleased to announce the availability of the California
Heritage Digital Image Access Project demonstration database.
URL: http://sunsite.Berkeley.EDU/CalHeritage/
Brief Project Overview.
The California Heritage collection is a "digital" archive containing
photographs, pictures, and manuscripts from the collections of the
Bancroft Library. It is an"archive" because it offers the public
direct access to unique, primary source materials documenting
California's rich history "in their original archival context." This
is achieved by embedding digital representations of the primary
sources directly within the documents -- archival finding aids --
created by the Bancroft Library's curators and archivists to describe
the collections of which they are part. While in the Bancroft's Heller
Reading Room a researcher must use a printed finding aid to make his
way through the cartons and boxes housing a collection in order to
find the picture or manuscript he wants, the user of the California
Heritage collection finds the objects of his search within an
electronic version of the finding aid itself. This is made possible
through the use of the emerging standard for archival finding aids,
Encoded Archival Description (EAD). In effect, this EAD-based
"virtual" archive opens the doors of the Bancroft Library to everyone
the world over -- the general public, students and teachers in their
classrooms, and researchers -- with an interest in the history of
California.
This archive is the chief product of the California Heritage Digital
Image Access Project, which has been made possible by a generous grant
from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The project began in
January 1995 and formally ends June 30, 1996 but the archive created
in it will continue to be augmented with new material for years to
come. The California Heritage Digital Image Access Project will serve
as the seed for an ever-growing rich new resource for scholars,
educators, and the public interested in California history and
culture. In addition, a number of other EAD-based digital archive
projects inspired by the NEH California Heritage Project (the NEH
American Heritage Project and the UC EAD Project) are beginning to lay
the groundwork for other large digital archives that will be available
on the Internet.
The project's central objective has been to build a prototype
demonstration database that, by the project's end, will provide
collection-level access to 25,000 digital representations of primarily
source materials documenting California history, which have been
selected from the collections of The Bancroft Library. By creating
this prototype system and making it available for testing on the
Internet, the California Heritage Digital Image Access Project will be
addressing important issues in digital image access and control. When
fully developed, the prototype will also use USMARC collection-level
records to provide access to its EAD encoded finding aids and digital
images. While the USMARC access component of this project is still
under development, direct access to the encoded finding aids is
currently provided here through a WWW interface (DynaWeb) that lets
users directly search and navigate the SGML encoded finding aids and
digitized primary source materials.
Project staff hope that this project will not only offer a compelling
solution to the access and control problems it identifies but also
serve as a national model for the construction of the kind of state
historical digital image database it is creating. We also hope that it
will serve as a demonstration system for archival control
professionals interested in state-of-the-art solutions to the problems
associated with network access to digital data.
Comments concerning both the technology underlying and the content of
the California Heritage database are welcome. Address comments to
Daniel Pitti: mailto:dpitti@library.berkeley.edu