Ways to Collaborate or Contribute
Create a digital collection of faculty-owned documents
Media created or collected by you to support teaching or research may be effective as online digital collections. Documents are searched and delivered via databases of shared subjects and/or provenance. Digital collections are a great way to give unfettered access to students in your courses, as well as researchers everywhere. Digital documents that populate our Digital Collections database are easily integrated into learning management systems such as Moodle. They are also easily linked or embedded into your online course assignments, or within websites and presentations created by your students. Digital collections give access to your media, allowing them to be searched, studied and integrated for educational (non-profit) purposes.
Some examples of digital collections derived from faculty collections, aggregations, or archives include:
- African American and Border Studies Collections (photographs).
- Vahdah Olcott-Bickford Correspondence (letters)
- Frank del Olmo Papers (various)
- Julian Nava Collection (various)
Donate your personal archival collection
Archival collections created by you or others can serve as valuable teaching and learning tools. In some instances, they are more effective in a print environment than in a digital one. Many collections of archival materials from faculty are included in the Finding Aid Database. Some examples include:
For scholarly works and data created by you, please review the submission process to ScholarWorks, the institutional repository of CSUN.
Add your media to existing digital collections
Digital collections are both broad (e.g. San Fernando Valley History), or subject specific (e.g. Water Works). Thematic collections like these contain works from multiple origins, which allows us to add to them as new materials are acquired. If you have created or collected documents that relate directly to existing, multi-provenance collections, you may wish to consider contributing them.
Create course assignments using archives online
Objects in the Digital Collections database contain reference URLs to enable linking or embedding into course websites or blogs.
Consult a librarian regarding the management and preservation of your personal documents
Physical documents require special care in order to forestall their inevitable decay. Digital documents are also subject to material decay as well as catastrophic damage, technological failure, human error, media obsolescence or a lack of an organizational strategy. Consult the Digital Services Librarian or Special Collections Librarian to help you manage and preserve your documents.