Institutions and Museums
- Alexandria Digital Research Library (ADRL) This link opens in a new window
The Alexandria Digital Research Library (ADRL) is UC Santa Barbara Library's home for collections of digital research materials. This comprehensive digital library is intended to increase access to millions of hidden digital research assets in the UCSB Library's possession and, ultimately, serve as a single federated dashboard or front end to discovering all of the Library's resources.The first phase of ADRL launched in April 2014, making theses and dissertations created by UCSB graduate students (2011-2017*) available to the UCSB community. In phase two, a representative subset of several thousand objects in the UCSB Library's existing digital collections were added. Anyone may search the database and read the abstracts. To view full text of UCSB digital theses and dissertations you either must be using a computer that is on campus, or you must authenticate using the UCSB proxy server. Users not affiliated with UCSB may order UCSB theses and dissertations through their institution's Interlibrary Loan service or purchase them directly through ProQuest.* NOTE: Only a small number of theses and dissertations are available for the year 2011. Complete coverage begins with theses and dissertations submitted in 2012. UCSB theses and dissertations from 2014 to the present are available in eScholarship.
- Calisphere This link opens in a new windowCalisphere is the University of California's free public gateway to a world of primary sources. More than 150,000 digitized items — including photographs, documents, newspaper pages, political cartoons, works of art, diaries, transcribed oral histories, advertising, and other unique cultural artifacts — reveal the diverse history and culture of California and its role in national and world history. Calisphere's content has been selected from the libraries and museums of the UC campuses, and from a variety of cultural heritage organizations across California.
- Online Archive of California (OAC) This link opens in a new windowThe Online Archive of California is a collaborative project to create a searchable online union database of finding aids to archival collections. This database includes the finding aids to repositories from 40 institutions statewide, including all nine UC campuses and is continuing to expand. A small but increasing number of the finding aids contain links to online digital versions of the source material. Finding aids are inventories, registers, indexes or guides to collections held by archives and manuscript repositories, libraries, and museums. Finding aids provide detailed descriptions of collections, their intellectual organization and, at varying levels of analysis, of individual items in the collections. Access to the finding aid is essential for understanding the true content of a collection and for determining whether it is likely to satisfy a scholar's research needs. For a detailed description on how to use primary source materials and their associated finding aids see: Library Research Using Primary Sources
- UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive This link opens in a new windowThe UCSB Cylinder Audio Archive provides free access to a digital collection of over 10,000 cylinder recordings held by the Department of Special Research Collections. You can find out more about the cylinder format, listen to thousands of musical and spoken selections from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and discover a little-known era of recorded sound.
Subscription-based collections
- Empire Online This link opens in a new windowA collection of original documents relating to Empire Studies from 1492 - 2007 sourced from libraries and archives around the world. This project has been developed to encourage undergraduate work with rare primary documents. By using images of the texts rather than transcriptions, Empire Online enables students to connect with the past with greater immediacy. Each Section features thematic essays by leading scholars in the field of Empire Studies. The essays relate directly to the source material covered by the online publication with 30-50 hypertext links per essay to documentary evidence.
- Global Commodities: Trade, Exploration and Cultural Exchange This link opens in a new windowGlobal Commodities contains primary materials related to the history of global commodities, trade and transformations of societies. Some features of the collection include the exploration and exploitation of raw materials in Africa, Americas, and Asia since the 15th Century, development of major ports, historical documents on the origins, transportation, consumption and impact of commodities on societies. The collection focuses on fifteen commodities - chocolate, coffee, cotton, fur, oil, opium, porcelain, silver and gold, spices, sugar, tea, timber, tobacco, wheat, and wine and spirits. The database includes data visualizations and interactive maps as well as, art, images, and commodity exhibitions.
- Grand Tour This link opens in a new windowThe Grand Tour digital collection consists of manuscripts, visual and printed works on the history of travel during 1550-1850 from libraries and archives around the world, including the Beinecke Library, the Paul Melon Centre, the Chaney Library, the British Library, and other selected sources. Topics include European political and religious life; British diplomacy; material culture; everyday life; and life at court.
- Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive This link opens in a new windowOn December 7, 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. The next day, the United States and Britain declared war on Japan. Two months later, on February 19, 1942, the lives of thousands of Japanese Americans were dramatically changed when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. This order led to the assembly and evacuation and relocation of nearly 122,000 men, women, and children of Japanese ancestry on the west coast of the United States. This site contains personal and official photographs, letters and diaries, transcribed oral histories, art, and more show the faces of the men, women, and children who were incarcerated; the prewar neighborhoods and wartime camps; and daily life there.
- Revolution and Protest Online This link opens in a new windowRevolution and Protest Online explores the protest movements, revolutions, and civil wars that have transformed societies and human experience from the 18th century through the present. Organized around more than thirty events and areas, representing a variety of time periods, regions, and topics, this collection will include at completion 175 hours of video, 100,000 pages of printed materials (personal papers, organizations, government documents, journals, reports, monographs, and speeches), and more than 1,000 images.
- South Asia ArchiveThe Archive is sourced from collectors and archivists in India by the South Asia Research Foundation. It contains both serials and non-serial materials, including reports, rare books, and journal runs from noteworthy rare publications, reflecting the varied knowledge production in colonial and early postcolonial India, including: culture and society; industry and economy; science, technology and medicine; urban planning and administration; and politics and the law.
