I NVESTIGATING
Ashley Butler, Rebecka Embry, Jo Lammert
INF385S Digital Libraries
February 17, 2011

http://www.calisphere.org

 “Calisphere is the University of California's free public gateway to a world of primary sources.”
 Public service project of the University of California and the California Digital Library (CDL)
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CDL Executive Director- Laine Farley, MLS, UT-Austin
CDL mission statement: “The California Digital Library exists to support the University of California community’s pursuit of scholarship and to extend the University’s public service mission.”
 CDL Founded in 1997
 Calisphere launched in 2006
 Origins from the Online Archive of California (OAC) in the
90s.

 Primary topic
 History and culture of California
 Calisphere Goals
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Facilitate the “assembly and creative use of scholarship for the UC libraries and the communities they serve”
Aid teachers by providing:
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Primary source material
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Sample lesson plans
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Primary source analysis sheets
 Funded by the department of Academic Planning,
Programs, and Coordination at the University of
California Office of the President and various grants

R ESOURCES
 Digitized images and text, such as photographs, documents, newspaper pages, political cartoons, works of art, diaries, transcribed oral histories, advertising, and other unique cultural artifacts
 Over 150,000 digitized items
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Items are taken from the Online Archive of California and provided by other contributing institutions
Calisphere acts as the host for the material http://www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu/institutions
.html
 Resources are both downloadable and printable from the website

M ETADATA
 Items are described using Dublin Core
 Easy to locate for each individual item

O RGANIZATION
 User Groups:
 Educators, researchers, historians, scholars, genealogists, writers, students, community members, and the public
 Designed for classroom use
 Variety of searching and browsing features
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Search boxes
Drop down menus
Browse a-z, search terms selected from California Content
Standards
By sample lesson plan
By primary source sets
By “Themed Collections”
By California cultures
By historical essay

http://www.calisphere.org

F RUSTRATIONS
 Image Examples
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 http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/kt9s20248t/ http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/tf609nb1wk/
 Textual examples
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 http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb7r29p227;NAA
N=13030&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=0&toc.depth=
1&toc.id=0&brand=calisphere http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/hb3f59n982/?order
=1&brand=calisphere
 Browse A-Z
 Potential for tagging?