Public Library Association Digital Collections LibGuide – This section of the ALA LibGuide offers resources to guide libraries in the provision of long-term access to the physical and intellectual contents of their collections ...
"Programming With Library of Congress Digital Collections" ALA Resource Guide – "This guide is designed to help all types of libraries explore primary sources available from the Library of Congress online collection, and to connect with their communities through programming and educational opportunities." The guide focuses on eight LOC collections (Arts, Civics, Folklife, History, Literature, Maps, Military Experience and STEM).
Navigating UML Digital Collections
This section is under construction. Please stand by.
UML Scholarly Repository Main Page – “The Scholarly Repository features selected research and scholarly works prepared by faculty, students, and staff at the University of Miami.” Includes links to theses, dissertations, and other academic research.
Regional/National/International Collections
Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)
“The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) is an all-digital library that aggregates metadata — or information describing an item — and thumbnails for millions of photographs, manuscripts, books, sounds, moving images, and more from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. DPLA brings together the riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and makes them freely available to the world. “
Library of Congress Digital Collections – “The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts in its collections. The Library is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office.”
National Archives & Records Administration – “The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is the nation's record keeper. Of all documents and materials created in the course of business conducted by the United States Federal government…”
Also includes History Hub – “a research support community for everyone, including genealogists, historians and citizen archivists”
Smithsonian Libraries and Archives – "Our digital collections include over 35,000 digitized books and manuscripts (available in either our Digital Library or as part of the Biodiversity Heritage Library) as well as digitized photo collections, ephemera, and seed catalogs. Many of our physical collections have not yet been digitized."
U.S. National Library of Medicine Digital Collections – the National Library of Medicine's free online repository of biomedical resources including books, manuscripts, still images, videos, and maps. The content in Digital Collections is freely available worldwide and, unless otherwise indicated, in the public domain. Digital Collections provides unique access to NLM's rich historical resources, as well as select modern resources.
EuroDocs – “These open access sources are readily available to all -- without fees or subscriptions.
Links connect to European primary historical documents that are transcribed, reproduced in facsimile, or translated. In addition, you will find video or sound files, maps, photographs or other imagery, databases, and other documentation. The sources cover a broad range of historical happenings (political, economic, social and cultural). The order of documents is chronological wherever possible.”
Also provides links to other tangential digital collections including:
Europeana “Europeana Collections provides access to over 50 million digitised items – books, music, artworks and more – with sophisticated search and filter tools to help you find what you’re looking for. Our dedicated thematic collections on art, fashion, music, photography and World War I contain galleries, blogs and exhibitions to inform and inspire. To learn more about Europeana, and find out how you can get involved, visit Europeana Pro.”
Digital Library of the Middle East – “(DLME) offers free and open access to the rich cultural legacy of the Middle East and North Africa by bringing together collections from a wide range of cultural heritage institutions.
HATHI Trust – “HathiTrust (listen to pronunciation) is a growing, global partnership of major research institutions and libraries working to ensure that the cultural record is preserved and accessible long into the future. The mission of HathiTrust is to contribute to research, scholarship, and the common good by collaboratively collecting, organizing, preserving, communicating, and sharing the record of human knowledge. There are more than 140 members in HathiTrust, and membership is open to institutions worldwide.”
Public Domain Image Archive - "Explore our hand-picked collection of 10,046 out-of-copyright works, free for all to browse, download, and reuse. This is a living database with new images added every week."
Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) – “A cooperative of Partners and Associate Partners dLOC provides users free and open access to Caribbean cultural, historical, scientific and research materials held in archives, libraries, museums, private collections, and other institutions of memory."
Umbra Search African American History – “makes African American history more broadly accessible through a freely available widget and search tool, umbrasearch.org; digitization of African American materials across University of Minnesota collections; and support of students, educators, artists, and the public through residencies, workshops, and events locally and around the country.”
RightsStatements.org – “RightsStatements.org provides a set of standardized rights statements that can be used to communicate the copyright and re-use status of digital objects to the public. Our rights statements are supported by major aggregation platforms such as the Digital Public Library of America and Europeana. The rights statements have been designed with both human users and machine users (such as search engines) in mind and make use of semantic web technology.”
Creative Commons – “Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that helps overcome legal obstacles to the sharing of knowledge and creativity to address the world’s pressing challenges.”
Creation, Curation, & Content Hosting
CONTENTdm – An institutional repository that “can handle document, image, video, and audio files of any kind, and it offers audio and video players for smooth play on mobile devices. With CONTENTdm, you have full control over your digital resources and their descriptions, access, and display. You can fully customize metadata fields and maximize end-user discovery of your materials. CONTENTdm's integration with IIIF APIs allows you to share images across collections and connect your collections with many tools and viewers.”
Omeka – “Omeka is a web publishing platform for sharing digital collections and creating media-rich online exhibits.” The Omeka software is open-source and customizable. Both free and hosted versions are available.
Omeka Classic Showcase provides many examples of digital exhibits that have been successfully created.
“The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative supports innovation in metadata design and best practices. DCMI is supported by its members and is a project of ASIS&T.”
Knightlab – “The Lab develops prototypes, projects and services that help make information meaningful and promote quality journalism, storytelling and content on the internet.”
Juxtapose: creates frame comparisons
Scene: creates VR stories
Soundcite: enables you to add inline audio to your stories
Storyline: build annotated, interactive line charts
StoryMap: create interactive maps that highlight the locations of a series of events
Timeline: use digital objects to create interactive timelines
Historypin - “We host 365,951 stories pinned across 27,844projects and tours – across 2,600 cities. Built by a community of 80,000+ storytellers, archivists and citizen historians. These numbers are growing every day as people around the world are running local Historypin activities within their communities.”
Collection Analysis
ArcGIS Online – “ArcGIS Online enables you to connect people, locations, and data using interactive maps.”
AntConc – AntConc is a freely available tool for text mining and corpus linguistics, with versions available for Macintosh, Windows, and Linux operating systems. Download free for Windows, Macintosh, or Linux.
“Collections As Data” project – plain text datasets of objects found in UM’s digital collections available for bulk download to facilitate computational text analysis. Two collections available:
Tableau – “Tableau Public is a free platform to publicly share and explore data visualizations online. Anyone can create visualizations using either Tableau Desktop Professional Edition or the free Public Edition.”
More Resources
The following recommended reading list is not meant to be an exhaustive list of literature related to digital collections, but rather to provide a natural starting point from which students, faculty, and patrons may learn more about them. For more information on creating, using, and maintaining digital collections, please see the LISTA (Library, Information Science & Technology Abstracts) database.
Books
MacKenzie, A. and Martin, L. (2016) Developing Digital Scholarship: Emerging Practices in Academic Libraries. Chicago, Ill.: Neal-Schuman.
Purcell, Aaron D. (2016) Digital Library Programs for Libraries and Archives: Developing, Managing, and Sustaining Unique Digital Collections. Chicago, Ill.: NealSchuman.
Miller, Steven J. (2011) Metadata for Digital Collections: A How-To-Do-It Manual. New York: Neal-Schuman Publishers.
Neatrour, Anna et al. (2025) The High-Impact Digital Library : Innovative Approaches for Outreach and Instruction. Chicago: ALA Editions in collaboration with Core.
Other Guides & Resources
Teaching With Primary Resources Workshop Resources
This resource guide is a companion to "First-Hand Knowledge: Exploring Primary Sources at UM Libraries"and the "Teaching with Primary Sources"workshops, hosted by UM's Platform for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (PETAL).
Primary Sources at Yale
This guide contains helpful information regarding digital object formats, how to create search strategies, and much more!
Skekel, Donna (2008) Digital Collections: Transforming the Work of Libraries, Journal of Library Metadata, 8:2, 147-153, DOI: 10.1080/10911360802087341 Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/10911360802087341
Hughes, Lorna M. (2014) 'Live and Kicking: The Impact and Sustainability of Digital Collections in the Humanities'. In: Clare Mills, Michael Pidd and Esther Ward. Proceedings of the Digital Humanities Congress 2012. Studies in the Digital Humanities. Sheffield: HRI Online Publications. Retrieved from https://www.dhi.ac.uk/books/dhc2012/live-and-kicking/
Daigle, Bradley J. (2012) The Digital Transformation of Special Collections, Journal of Library Administration, 52:3-4, 244-264, DOI: 10.1080/01930826.2012.684504 Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2012.684504
Zick, Greg. (2009) Digital Collections: History and Perspectives, Journal of Library Administration, 49(7), 687-693, DOI: 10.1080/01930820903260465 Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/01930820903260465
Cain, J. O. (2016). Using Topic Modeling to Enhance Access to Library Digital Collections. Journal of Web Librarianship, 10(3), 210–225. https://doi.org/10.1080/19322909.2016.1193455
Articles on Digital Projects & Exhibits
Baggett, M. & Gibbs, R. (2014) Historypin and Pinterest for Digital Collections: Measuring the Impact of Image-Based Social Tools on Discovery and Access, Journal of Library Administration, 54(1), 11-22. DOI: 10.1080/01930826.2014.893111 Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/01930826.2014.893111
Deal, Laura. (2015) Visualizing Digital Collections, Technical Services Quarterly, 32(1), 14-34. DOI: 10.1080/07317131.2015.972871 Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/07317131.2015.972871
Marsh, D., Punzalan, R., Leopold, R., Butler, B., & Petrozzi, M. (2016). Stories of impact: the role of narrative in understanding the value and impact of digital collections. Archival Science, 16(4), 327–372. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-015-9253-5
Marty, Paul F. (2011) My lost museum: User expectations and motivations for creating personal digital collections on museum websites. Library & Information Science Research 33(3), 211-219. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lisr.2010.11.003
Novara, E. and Novara, V.J. (2017) Exhibits as Scholarship: Strategies for Acceptance, Documentation, and Evaluation in Academic Libraries. The American Archivist, Fall/Winter 2017, 80(2), 355-372. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.17723/0360-9081-80.2.355
Ramsby, Kenton. (2016) A Checklist of Free Digital Tools and Software Programs. CLA Journal: Special Issue, Digital Humanities, 59(3), 295-298. Retrieved from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44325921
Rose, Mary Z. (2016) Why and How to Create Digital Special Collections. CLA Journal: Special Issue, Digital Humanities, 59(3), 259-268. Retrieved from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44325918
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