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Policies Library Special Collections Digitization Policy

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Policies

UCLA Library Special Collections (LSC) is committed to proactive and strategic digitization of our collections. To sustainably expand our holdings, LSC focuses on projects that support departmental digitization priorities and uses the following nine criteria to guide decision-making:

  1. Historical significance

  2. Instructional value

  3. Current collecting priorities

  4. Metadata

  5. Preservation needs

  6. Resource intensity

  7. Copyright

  8. Ethics/sensitivity

  9. Privacy/confidentiality

In addition to considering these nine criteria, our decision-making process is also designed to prioritize equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI). Rather than treating EDI as a tenth criterion, we instead consider EDI during the analysis of each of the nine criteria so that EDI is at the center of the evaluation. LSC has defined EDI for our purposes as “materials that elevate and do not harm individuals, groups and communities that institutions of power have historically silenced.”

Guiding Questions

LSC uses the following guiding questions to determine whether a collection should be prioritized for digitization:

To what extent would digital access to the materials enhance LSC’s core mission and goals?

  • Does the material offer research potential that fills a gap in existing resources and broadens our cultural heritage knowledge? Would the digitized content add significantly to or complement existing materials that are focused on expanding the representation of underrepresented, marginalized or erased communities and their histories?

  • Will the digitized materials support instruction, inform the importance of primary research skills, foster original research and/or ensure our holdings are incorporated into the UCLA curriculum? Would digital access to these records create instruction opportunities about/for marginalized communities?

  • Would access to these materials support LSC's current collecting priorities and further advance the mission, vision and principles of UCLA and the UCLA Library? Could the materials be activated by those communities for more robust representation and efforts to achieve justice or reparation, or could they serve as inspiration to imagine a better future?

How ready is the metadata to be repurposed in the context of a digitization project?

  • Is the existing metadata complete and correct?
  • Is the metadata free of any harmful or outdated language?

What benefit would digitization have for the preservation/conservation of the materials?

  • Are the materials at risk of deteriorating or becoming inaccessible if digitization does not occur? Would deterioration result in a loss of cultural heritage for a community that institutions of power have historically silenced?

What is the extent of that material to be digitized, and how much staff labor would be needed to prepare the materials for imaging?

What are the legal risks associated with posting the digitized materials online?

  • What is the copyright status of the materials and what risks are associated with their copyright status?
  • Is there any legally protected confidential information?
  • Is there any content that violates state privacy law?
  • Is there an agreement with the donor to restrict the material?

Is it ethically appropriate for us to post the digitized materials online?

  • Did the creators and/or subjects have agency in being documented? Did they have agency in the records being made publicly accessible?
  • How will these digitized materials benefit or harm impacted communities and/or subjects?

Recent Projects

Digitized collections are publicly available through the UCLA Library Digital Collections portal. Our recently published collections include:

Contact

If you have any questions, please contact our Digital Projects Coordinator, Molly Haigh.