Digital Collections
UCR Library Digital Collections contain digital gems for research, teaching, and learning.
The digital materials you find here — images, text, audio, and video — enrich and support the work of UC Riverside’s faculty, researchers, students, and staff as well as the broader community. These Digital Collections serve UCR Library’s mission to preserve, protect, and provide access to the information it holds. This includes selected materials that have been digitized from the library’s holdings, as well as born-digital materials that provide enduring value for intellectual inquiry, research, and discovery.
Our Principles
The Library encourages and supports research, teaching, and scholarship to advance global knowledge and understanding. By digitizing and sharing its treasures, both old and new, the Library can enhance research and scholarship across the world.
An imperative to enhance unfettered access to Library-digitized or acquired digital content guides our decisions related to digitization, discovery, and access. At the same time, the Library aspires to balance and inform such access to the digital historical record with legal, contractual, ethical, and safety considerations.
In providing digital access to materials and metadata from Library collections, the Library:
- Adheres to copyright law, including the transfer or license of copyrighted materials to or by the university, and supports the exercise of fair use and the dissemination of materials in the public domain;
- Respects people’s statutory and common law rights to privacy and individuals’ publicity rights, and adheres to applicable legal requirements in protecting those rights;
- Adheres to provisions in agreements we have entered into regarding materials in our collections; and
- Accounts for social and religious customs, and other circumstances (including documented evidence of a clear and imminent threat of personal or legal harm, or risks of exploitation of people, natural or cultural resources, or indigenous knowledge) that may impact use of some materials in our collections.
The Library, at its own discretion, may restrict access to or use of digital reproductions and update metadata according to each of these principles. We further acknowledge the historical and evolving social, cultural, and political contexts in which the materials under our current stewardship have been created, collected, and used. We approach access decisions in relation to those contexts and in consultation with communities of origin, where appropriate.
Given our commitment to preserving the authenticity and integrity of the scholarly and historical record, we are unable to correct errors or inaccuracies present in original items. Requests for takedowns, access restrictions, or metadata updating will be considered only in keeping with recognized legal rights and the principles above. Jump to:
How do I report an error found in a digital collections item?
The Library has made best faith efforts to value and respect the complexities involved with making available and describing digital materials. If you have further information that might affect our determinations about the accuracy or online availability of items, please follow the steps below:
- Copyright matters - If you believe material should be taken down due to purported copyright infringement, please see the UCR Library Notice and Takedown Policy: https://library.ucr.edu/about/policies/notice-and-takedown-policy
- Other matters - If you believe the accuracy or online availability of the material should be addressed under any other policy principle listed above, please email Lib-DigiCollections@ucr.edu with the following information in your correspondence: Your contact information (including email address). Exact URL where you found the material or information online. Details that describe the material (title, collection name, number of items, etc.). The reason you believe the digital material or its description should be revised, updated, or edited. A statement that includes one of the following: (1) the information you provide in your communication is accurate and that you are authorized to act as the owner or on behalf of the owner of the material, or (2) the information you provide in your communication is accurate and you have an interest in the material or its description.
- After we hear from you, the Library will: Upon receipt of your correspondence, acknowledge the message via email. Begin to assess the next steps and, in the process of assessment, possibly follow up with you for more information. Upon completion of the assessment, take appropriate action and communicate that action and our decision to you.
How do I make a digital collections permission or reproduction request?
If you have questions about how you can use digital materials made available through this site, please see Special Collections & University Archives Reproductions Policies.
What is the digital collections commenting policy?
If you have questions about commenting on Digital Collections, where comments are enabled, please see Digital Collections Commenting Policy: https://library.ucr.edu/about/policies/digital-collections-commenting-policy
Large portions of this text were inspired by UC Berkeley Library’s About Digital Collections, CC-BY-NC: UC Berkeley Library.