Digital Library Program

About the Digital Library Program

The Digital Library Program (DLP) encourages, facilitates, and supports the collaborative creation, management, delivery, and long-term preservation of digital assets in support of the Libraries’ mission and goals. The program reports to the Associate University Librarian, Technology Services and is a key component of the Libraries’ 2006-2009 Strategic Plan.

The Program is currently staffed by a Digital Library Program Manager and a Digital Library Program Analyst. A Digital Library Architect and other staff from the Libraries’ Information Technology Department provide technical support to the Program. Metadata analysis, crosswalks, and METS profile creation are provided by metadata specialists from the Libraries’ Metadata Services Department.

Content is built collaboratively with collection curators. Public services librarians participate in usability testing and provide feedback and advice on the design of interfaces and services. In addition, several staff members from other units provide expertise and advice, as needed, on digital rights, website design and management, training, and assessment.

A Steering Committee co-chaired by the AUL, Collection Services and AUL, Technology Services provides overall guidance and a Coordinating Team oversees the development of the Libraries’ Digital Asset Management System.

Collections

Click here for an alphabetical listing of various digital collections created and maintained by the University of California, San Diego Libraries.

Services offered in partnership with the California Digital Library

Digital Preservation Repository

Provides a single shared solution for the preservation, management, and controlled dissemination of digital collections that support research, teaching, and learning for benefit of the UC Libraries and their users. The repository provides a set of self-service interfaces that the libraries use to deposit and manage digital objects. The services and storage are based at the CDL.

eScholarship Repository

A free, open-access infrastructure that offers UC departments, centers, and research units direct control over the creation and dissemination of the full range of their scholarship, including pre-publication materials, journals and peer-reviewed series, postprints, and seminar papers. These materials are freely available to the public online.

Online Archive of California
A core component of the CDL, the OAC is a digital information resource that facilitates and provides access to materials such as manuscripts, photographs, and works of art held in libraries, museums, archives, and other institutions across California. The OAC is available to students, teachers, and researchers of all levels, providing access to information previously available only to scholars who traveled to collection sites.

The Digital Asset Management System

The UCSD Libraries Digital Asset Management System (DAMS) is a locally developed digital repository designed to store and manage the digital assets of the UCSD Libraries.

The DAMS stores digital content files and allows for the creation, indexing and searching of associated metadata to locate and retrieve the content files. Content can be composed of files in any format, including text, sound, video, and images.

The DAMS is also designed to facilitate the transfer and submission of the Libraries' digital assets to California Digital Library’s Digital Preservation Repository (DPR) and can easily be extended to serve other purposes.

Access to the DAMS

At the moment, only Library curators have access to the DAMS. Faculty and staff access will be provided as soon as the proper rights, security, and performance controls are in place (for more information, read the FAQs here).

Technical Architecture

The Libraries’ DAMS is an extensible application built upon Open Source technologies, including Linux, Java/Tomcat, the Semantic Web Resource Description Framework (RDF) data model, SQL, XML/XSL, Lucene, the San Diego Supercomputer Center’s Storage Resource Broker (SRB), and the Archival Resource Key (ARK) naming scheme. Click here to view the DAMS technical diagram.

Publications and Presentations

Arwen Hutt, Trish Rose-Sandler and Bradley D. Westbrook, "Balancing the Needs of Producers and Managers of Digital Assets through Extensible Metadata Normalization," Against the Grain. [Download]

Vickie O'Riordan, "This is the Modern World; Collaborating with ARTstor," Futures Past: Twenty Years of Arts Computing. [Download]

Staff Contacts