About Digital Collections
With the founding of the Digital Scriptorium in 1995, Duke University Libraries began the process of making its holdings more accessible via the World Wide Web. Through this work we seek to:
- Enhance access and aid preservation
- Add value
- Facilitate research, teaching, and learning
What is a digital collection?
Our digital collections provide patrons with digital versions of library materials as well as tools to browse, search, and analyze these materials online. In addition to providing easier access to these materials, digital collections aid in the preservation of materials by reducing the need for handling the originals. Different collections provide different levels of online access:
- Images: some collections provide digital images of photographs, manuscripts, or printed material; however some collections contain images that have not been digitized and for which only bibliographic information is available online.
- Full text: some collections provide searchable, full text of manuscripts or printed material; however, some collections contain manuscripts or printed material for which only bibliographic information is available online
- Bibliographic information: Bibliographic information is available online for all items in our digital collections.
Please note that digital collections have been created for only a small subset of our collections.
How is a digital collection different from a finding aid?
Digital collections provide patrons with access to material in some form online. Archival finding aids provide descriptions of materials that are available in physical form offline rather than in digital form online.
Finding aids provide online descriptive tools which serve as the primary point of intellectual access to archival collections in archives and manuscript repositories. They serve as extensive guides to over 900 collections. In most cases, finding aids provide descriptions of materials that are only available in physical, rather than digital form. Please note that archival finding aids have been created for only a small subset of our collections.
Why can't I search all collections at the same time?
Our collections were placed online at different times using a variety of tools, and this made it difficult to search or browse across multiple collections at once. We are in the process of migrating most of our digital collections into a common set of tools that will allow patrons to search or browse across multiple collections at the same time.
What can I do with items that I find in the collections?
The materials on this web site are made available for use in research, teaching and private study. Although the material on this web site is publicly accessible for the limited purposes described above, some material is not in the public domain. Copyright in specific materials may be owned by Duke University, by another institution, or by an individual. Each collection may have specific copyright information and usage rules. Learn more....
The technical bits
We are migrating our collections into a new system developed in-house using the following open source software components:
- MySQL database for our metadata
- SOLR search server
- Cocoon framework to process search results and convert XML to HTML
Jill Katte is the Digital Collections Coordinator. Will Sexton is the lead developer. Members of the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Digital Production Center, Information Systems Support Department, and Digital Projects Department have contributed to the production of our digital collections.
