More News January 02, 2020

The UCR Library is pleased to announce the acquisition of several new online databases, archives, reference works, and more.

These new resources, selected by librarians in the Collection Strategies Department, will enhance the library’s existing distinctive collections, support emerging areas of research at UCR, and provide access to valuable research and teaching resources.

The new resources include:

New Sections of JoVE: The Journal of Visualized Experiments

JoVE is a video journal platform featuring videos that teach fundamental concepts and techniques for the lab.  Via JoVE, researchers and students can view the intricate details of cutting-edge experiments rather than read them in text articles.  The UCR Library has added two collections to our JoVE offerings: JoVe Science Education Chemistry & Advanced Biology and JoVE Immunology and Infection.

Henry Stewart Talks: Biomedical & Life Sciences Collection

HSTalks provides specially prepared, animated, online, audio-visual lectures, seminar-style talks and case studies.  Editors and lecturers are leading world experts and practitioners, including Nobel Laureates, drawn from academia, research institutes, commerce, industry, the professions and government.

UK National Archives, Collections CO1 and CO5

Colonial State Papers

This collection, available on the ProQuest platform, includes Collection CO 1 from The UK National Archives, officially titled Privy Council and related bodies: America and West Indies, Colonial Papers and the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial: North America and the West Indies 1574-1739.

Colonial America: Complete CO5 Files from UK National Archives, 1600-1822

Colonial America, via the Adam Matthew Platform, makes available all 1,450 volumes of the CO 5 series from The National Archives, UK, covering the period 1606 to 1822. CO 5 consists of the original correspondence between the British government and the governments of the American colonies, making it a uniquely rich resource for all historians of the period.  The UCR Library has access to Module I: Early Settlement, Expansion and Rivalries, and Module II: Towards Revolution.  For more information on these modules, see http://www.colonialamerica.amdigital.co.uk/Introduction/NatureAndScope.

Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings

This diverse and comprehensive collection focuses on the cultural study of music and explores content from across the globe.  Produced in collaboration with the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive, the material in this collection includes thousands of audio field recordings and interviews, educational recordings, film footage, field notebooks, slides, correspondence and ephemera from over 60 fields of study.

American Indian Newspapers

From historic pressings to contemporary periodicals, American Indian Newspapers contains nearly 200 years of Indigenous print journalism from the United States and Canada. With newspapers representing a huge variety in publisher, audience and era, this resource allows researchers to discover how events were reported by and for Indigenous communities.

American Indian Newspapers was developed with, and has only been made possible by, the permission and contribution of the newspaper publishers and Tribal Councils concerned.

New Subjects from Oxford Bibliographies Online

The UCR Library has added six new topical areas to our Oxford Bibliographies Online collection:

• African American Studies
• Atlantic History
• Buddhism
• Environmental Science
• Philosophy
• Sociology

Oxford Bibliographies are developed cooperatively with scholars and librarians worldwide, and offer exclusive, authoritative research guides across a variety of subject areas. The Oxford Bibliographies combine the best features of an annotated bibliography and a high-level encyclopedia and direct researchers to the best available scholarship in a given subject.  The UCR Library also has access to the following Oxford Bibliographies: Anthropology, Art History, Chinese Studies, Education, Evolutionary Biology, Latin American Studies, Latinx Studies, Music, Psychology, and Public Health.

More News January 20, 2017

On January 4, 2017, the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) announced that the UCR Library and the Sherman Indian Museum would receive a $376,191 Digitizing Hidden Collections grant, generously funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, for a collaborative project to digitize the museum’s collection.

“Their collection houses thousands of one-of-a-kind documents about the history, education, and culture of The Sherman Institute from 1901 to 1970, and Sherman Indian High School from 1970 to the present day,” explained Dr. Clifford E. Trafzer, UC Riverside’s Distinguished Professor of History and Rupert Costo Chair in American Indian Affairs. “The collections also have all the records of Perris Indian School from 1892 to 1904, when the Bureau of Indian Affairs transferred students to The Sherman Institute, the first off-reservation American Indian boarding school in southern California. These are valuable treasures that cannot be replaced. Documents and photographs represent many aspects of student life at Sherman and focus on the people, curriculum, sports, music, dance, and vocational education.”

“These records hold the history for so many people: Native American people who came to school here, people who have worked here, and their families,” said Lorene Sisquoc, Director of the Sherman Indian Museum. “We get many different research requests, not just from alumni. It’s been quite in-demand for the past 25 years, and the demand has gotten bigger and bigger to access these archives that are well over 100 years old. It was crucial that we got this done somehow.”

The Sherman Indian Museum collection is an invaluable resource documenting the Native American experience in the United States. The collection supports research in a range of disciplines and on a variety of topics including Native American education, the US government’s cultural assimilation efforts of Native Americans, and the history of American Indian off-reservation boarding schools.

“There are only a handful of American Indian boarding school collections out there, and the only other one that has been digitized is in Pennsylvania,” explained Eric Milenkiewicz, Manuscripts Curator and co-principal investigator on the grant. “So this project will provide the public with a glimpse into the boarding school experience from a California, west coast perspective.” Given the granting agency’s guidelines, the Sherman Indian Museum could not apply for the grant on their own; they also didn’t have the resources needed to digitize their collection. That was all the incentive that UCR Library needed to complete the grant application last April.

“Serving this type of community need is exactly why the Inland Empire Memories initiative exists,” Eric explained. Founded in 2013, the mission of Inland Empire Memories is to identify, preserve, interpret, and share the rich cultural legacies of the Inland Empire’s diverse communities. “It’s really about safeguarding these materials, this community treasure for future generations. This is part of Riverside’s history, which UCR is also a part of, and we want to make sure that the collection is preserved and accessible to the community.” The digital collection will be made available through Calisphere, thanks to CLIR and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, allowing worldwide online access to this rich resource.

As part of this grant, UCR Library will help build infrastructure for future digitization efforts at the Sherman Indian Museum. The grant will also procure scanning equipment for the Museum, and students from the Sherman Indian High School will receive training so that they can participate in digitization.  “This is something that’s been needed for a long time,” said Lorene, “and we’re very fortunate to get this.”

“One of our project’s primary goals is to embed these technical skills in the community that will be carrying this digitization work forward,” Eric explained. “We believe that the skills learned by the students over the course of this project will positively impact the museum and community, promoting a greater understanding of digital initiatives work. And we hope that this grant project will inspire further community support from other interested organizations or individuals who will want to step in, to carry this torch into the future,” Eric added.

Benefits of digitizing the Sherman Museum’s collection are many, but three come to the forefront. As Lorene explains, “It’s going to benefit people all over to be able to access these, and also to protect them so we won’t be using originals as research access.” According to Dr. Trafzer, “Scholars will produce many books and articles from the rich documents found in the collections,” he explained. “Equally important, former Native American students of Sherman and their families will have easy access to documents and photographs, school newspapers and annuals. Native American people and families will be able to learn more about the lives of their loved ones. This will provide contemporary American Indians and scholars with images and voices of past generations of students, faculty, and staff at Sherman.”

“It’s not just great news for UCR’s own graduate students,” Associate University Librarian for Collections & Scholarly Communication, Alison Scott concurred. “This will be great for the world.”

More News August 08, 2019

The Sherman Indian Museum digitization project now has more than 9,000 items available online through Calisphere; at the completion of the project, this figure will surpass 13,000.

The Sherman Indian Museum holds the archives of the Sherman Indian High School, an off-reservation boarding high school for Native Americans, with students from grades 9 through 12 who represent 76 federally recognized tribes from across the United States. Originally called the Perris Indian School when it opened in 1892 in Perris, California, it was moved to Riverside in 1903 under the name of The Sherman Institute. Then in 1971, it was accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and renamed as the Sherman Indian High School.

Over the past two years, the UCR Library’s Digitization Project Coordinator Charlotte Dominguez has worked with four UCR students and 12 student workers from Sherman Indian High School to make items from the museum’s archival collections available online worldwide. Project completion is set by fall 2019.

“Native Americans were a big part of Southern California history that people don’t know a lot about, outside of academia,” explained Dominguez, who has worked with the Indigenous community for about 10 years, including her time with UC Riverside. “The native community is very active, very present. People with indigenous heritage only make about 1-1.5% of the population, but their culture is strong and thriving.”

The digitized collection spans more than a century of the school’s history: from the early years of the Perris Indian School in the 1890s, the Sherman Institute in the early 1900s, to when Sherman Indian High School was founded in the early 1970s, up to contemporary students in 2009.

“It has been a dream come true to have this project come to reality. Our boarding school story needs to be told, shared, and available to the world. That story has impacted our tribes in many ways, good and bad,” said Lorene Sisquoc, Director of the Sherman Indian Museum. “Now the photos and documents our museum holds can be accessed in a safe way. The alumni, families and researchers who are seeking this information can now have it at their fingertips. These records of our school’s history are now preserved for future generations to know this story.”

“Even though what we’re showing is mostly history, it’s still relevant to the present,” Dominguez added. “They’re living in modern times, but still keeping their history, traditions and culture relevant.”

Early on, Digitization Program Services Manager Eric Milenkiewicz knew that having this collection available digitally would have a deeply rewarding impact for the Native American community and researchers worldwide.

“Successful projects like this demonstrate what can be achieved when academic institutions and local community archives join forces,” Milenkiewicz added. “Not only does this help to preserve and increase access to these cultural heritage collections, but it also helps to strengthen the bond between the university and the community it serves."

The project’s goals went beyond purely digitizing the collection and publishing it on the Internet. Dominguez also spent time teaching the students and Sherman Indian Museum Director Lorene Sisquoc how to use their newly-acquired tools and equipment, how to create metadata, and how to research using the internet to cross-reference details, so that the museum could continue the work independently after this project’s term ends.

The computer and scanning equipment used for the project will remain on-site at the Museum, and Dominguez added that Sisquoc intends to have Sherman Indian High School students continue scanning photos and documents, though they may not be published immediately on Calisphere. Even with the projected 13,000 items published online at project’s end, Dominguez said that there are still several thousand items remaining to be digitized, which were not part of the original project.

After digitization, a lot of behind-the-scenes work still remained before the team could publish this massive collection on Calisphere, which is where Digital Assets Metadata Librarian Noah Geraci made significant contributions to the project’s success. Geraci’s work transformed the collection from a group of files on a hard drive to a publicly accessible online resource. “It’s been really wonderful to work with the Sherman community and be part of such a meaningful project,” he said.

"The Sherman Digital Project has already had an incredible impact on Native American individuals, families, and tribes who have accessed the collections online. Until the digital project, many American Indians had been unable to visit Sherman Indian Museum to access records germane to their families and people.  Now they have easy access to documents, and they are able to learn about their friends and relatives who were former students of Sherman Institute,” explained Dr. Clifford E. Trafzer, Distinguished Professor of History and Rupert Costo Chair in American Indian Affairs. “In addition to supporting new scholarship, digital access has opened new research opportunities to Native Americans. The project is a major contribution and welcomed by many researchers, including student researchers of all ages."​

Milenkiewicz originally collaborated with Dr. Trafzer to write and submit the grant proposal in April 2016. In January 2017, the library received the grant totaling $376,191 from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

More News June 12, 2025

On June 16, the UCR Library transitioned to the new EBSCOhost user interface (UI)

All EBSCOhost databases—including Academic Search Complete, Business Source Complete, ebooks hosted on EBSCO, and more—have a new UI. This means a new look and feel, plus a few minor changes to functionality. The new user interface is designed to be more modern and user friendly, while also introducing new features such as personalized dashboards and the ability to save resources and searches. Additional improvements include text-to-speech and filters that remain applied when a search query is modified.

If users have created a MyEBSCO account already, they will use the same login on the new UI. All links should update automatically, but if an old bookmark no longer works after the migration, go to the UCR Library’s Databases A-Z list and follow the link you wish to bookmark. For more information, please see EBSCO's new UI Quick Start Guide.

If you have any questions, please contact Carla Arbagey, Collection Strategist Librarian, at carla.arbagey@ucr.edu.

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Image of new UI below:

More News April 07, 2020

The UCR Library is pleased to announce the following recent resource acquisitions:

Civil War Primary Resource Documents

Civil War Primary Source Documents from The New-York Historical Society contains unique manuscript material chronicling all aspects of the American Civil War from warfare on land, at sea, in hospitals and prison camps, and reactions and impressions of the War from the home front. The collection, comprised of more than 110,000 pages, focuses on the War as it was fought from 1861 to 1865 and represents both Northern and Southern perspectives.

Revolutionary War Era Orderly Books

Revolutionary War Era Orderly Books from the New-York Historical Society is a collection of more than 30,000 pages of historically unique material from more than 200 orderly books spanning from 1748 to 1817. The collection includes both British and American orderly books, a form of manuscript journals kept by military units containing their orders from higher-ranking officers in addition to other information essential to military operations, dating from the French and Indian War through the War of 1812, with the bulk representing the activities of American forces during the Revolutionary War.

Cannabis NewsBank

Cannabis NewsBank: Research Edition is a powerful, multi-disciplinary resource for students and researchers seeking information related to the cannabis and hemp industries. Its searchable database features current and historical news and information from more than 12,000 sources, including over three million cannabis and hemp related reports, documents and articles. This one-of- a-kind research tool features content from prominent cannabis and hemp industry publications as well as in-depth local coverage from every state in the United States, Canada, and countries across the globe.

New Sections of JoVE: The Journal of Visualized Experiments

JoVE is a video journal platform featuring videos that teach fundamental concepts and techniques for the lab.  Via JoVE, researchers and students can view the intricate details of cutting-edge experiments rather than read them in text articles.  The UCR Library has added two collections to our JoVE offerings: JoVe Science Education Chemistry & Advanced Biology and JoVE Immunology and Infection.

Henry Stewart Talks: Biomedical & Life Sciences Collection

HSTalks provides specially prepared, animated, online, audio-visual lectures, seminar-style talks and case studies.  Editors and lecturers are leading world experts and practitioners, including Nobel Laureates, drawn from academia, research institutes, commerce, industry, the professions and government. 

UK National Archives, Collections CO1 and CO5

Colonial State Papers

This collection, available on the ProQuest platform, includes Collection CO 1 from The UK National Archives, officially titled Privy Council and related bodies: America and West Indies, Colonial Papers and the Calendar of State Papers, Colonial: North America and the West Indies 1574-1739.

Colonial America: Complete CO5 Files from UK National Archives, 1600-1822

Colonial America, via the Adam Matthew Platform, makes available all 1,450 volumes of the CO 5 series from The National Archives, UK, covering the period 1606 to 1822. CO 5 consists of the original correspondence between the British government and the governments of the American colonies, making it a uniquely rich resource for all historians of the period.  The UCR Library has access to Module I: Early Settlement, Expansion and Rivalries, and Module II: Towards Revolution.  For more information on these modules, see http://www.colonialamerica.amdigital.co.uk/Introduction/NatureAndScope. 

Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings

This diverse and comprehensive collection focuses on the cultural study of music and explores content from across the globe.  Produced in collaboration with the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive, the material in this collection includes thousands of audio field recordings and interviews, educational recordings, film footage, field notebooks, slides, correspondence and ephemera from over 60 fields of study. 

American Indian Newspapers

From historic pressings to contemporary periodicals, American Indian Newspapers contains nearly 200 years of Indigenous print journalism from the United States and Canada. With newspapers representing a huge variety in publisher, audience and era, this resource allows researchers to discover how events were reported by and for Indigenous communities.

American Indian Newspapers was developed with, and has only been made possible by, the permission and contribution of the newspaper publishers and Tribal Councils concerned. 

New Subjects from Oxford Bibliographies Online

The UCR Library has added six new topical areas to our Oxford Bibliographies Online collection: 

• African American Studies

• Atlantic History

• Buddhism

• Environmental Science

• Philosophy​

• Sociology

Oxford Bibliographies are developed cooperatively with scholars and librarians worldwide, and offer exclusive, authoritative research guides across a variety of subject areas. The Oxford Bibliographies combine the best features of an annotated bibliography and a high-level encyclopedia and direct researchers to the best available scholarship in a given subject.  The UCR Library also has access to the following Oxford Bibliographies: Anthropology, Art History, Chinese Studies, Education, Evolutionary Biology, Latin American Studies, Latinx Studies, Music, Psychology, and Public Health.

More News April 17, 2023

The UCR Library acquired access to several primary source archives from Gale and AM, formerly known as Adam Matthew Digital.

New resources from Gale:

• Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive 

  Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive is devoted to the study and understanding of the history of slavery in America and the rest of the world from the 17th century to the late 19th century. The archive consists of more than five million cross-searchable pages sourced from books, pamphlets, newspapers, periodicals, legal documents, court records, monographs, manuscripts, and maps from many different countries covering the history of the slave trade.

• Native American Studies from Archives Unbound 

  Collection of primary sources and more sourced from the following archives:

  • Presbyterian Historical Society Collection of Missionaries' Letters, 1833-1893

  • American Indian Movement and Native American Radicalism

  • Meriam Report on Indian Administration and the Survey of Conditions of the Indians in the U.S.

  • The Indian Trade in the Southeastern Spanish Borderlands: Papers of Panton, Leslie and Company

  • The War Department and Indian Affairs, 1800-1824

• Indigenous Peoples of North America, Part 2 

  Primary source collection for research into the cultural, political, and social history of Native Peoples from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. The UCR Library has access to parts 1 & 2.

New resources from AM:

• Colonial Caribbean: Colonial Office Files from The National Archives, UK

  Stretching from Jamaica and the Bahamas to Trinidad and Tobago, Colonial Caribbean makes available materials from 27 Colonial Office file classes from The National Archives, UK. Covering the history of the various territories under British colonial governance from 1624 to 1870, this extensive resource includes administrative documentation, trade and shipping records, minutes of council meetings, and details of plantation life, colonial settlement, imperial rivalries across the region, and the growing concern of absentee landlords.

• Confidential Print: Latin America

  This collection consists of the Confidential Print for Central and South America and the French- and Spanish-speaking Caribbean. Topics covered include slavery and the slave trade, immigration, relations with indigenous peoples, wars and territorial disputes, the fall of the Brazilian monarchy, British business and financial interests, industrial development, the building of the Panama Canal, and the rise to power of populist rulers such as Perón in Argentina and Vargas in Brazil.

• Empire Studies from AM Scholar 

  This collection offers a rich array of primary and secondary sources for the study of the British Empire. It features material on British colonial policy and government; perspectives on life in British colonies; the relationship between gender and empire; race; and class.

• Literary Print Culture: The Stationers' Company Archive

  The Stationers’ Company Archive is one of the most important resources for understanding the workings of the early book trade, the printing and publishing community, and the establishment of legal requirements for copyright provisions and the history of bookbinding. Explore extremely rare documents dating from 1554 to the 21st century in this resource of research material for historians and literary scholars.

• Medieval and Early Modern Studies from AM Scholar 

  This collection provides a wide range of primary sources covering social, cultural, political, scientific, and religious perspectives from the 12th to early18th centuries. Document types include illuminated manuscripts, personal papers, diaries and letters, rare books, receipt books, and manuscript sheet music. The breadth of sources provided within this collection is extraordinary, from sources concerning the Black Death to the Restoration of the English monarchy and the Glorious Revolution.

• Medieval Family Life: The Paston, Cely, Plumpton, Stonor and Armburgh Papers

  Includes five major letter collections and associated manuscripts from fifteenth-century England, which take the user into the world of medieval families, businesses, relationships, trade, politics and communities. Medieval Family Life presents full-color images of the original medieval manuscripts of which these letter collections are constituted, alongside fully searchable transcriptions drawn from available printed editions.

• Medieval Travel Writing

  Medieval Travel Writing is an extensive collection of manuscript materials for the study of medieval travel writing in fact and in fantasy. The core of the material is a collection of medieval manuscripts from libraries around the world, dating from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries and focusing on accounts of journeys to the Holy Land, India and China. Texts include some of the most influential prose works of the late Middle Ages – notably the books of Marco Polo and ‘Sir John Mandeville’ – but also important items by lesser-known authors such as John of Plano Carpini and Odoric of Pordenone.

• Nineteenth Century Literary Society: The John Murray Publishing Archive

  Nineteenth Century Literary Society makes available more than 1,400 items from the archive of the historic John Murray publishing company. Primary source materials span the entirety of the long nineteenth century and document the golden era of the House of Murray from its inception in 1768. Records digitized in this resource predominantly focus on the tenure of John Murray II and his son, John Murray III, as they rose to prominence in the publishing trade, launching long-running series including the political periodical Quarterly Review, and publishing genre-defining titles such as Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Austen’s Emma and Livingstone’s Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa.

• Race Relations in America

  Sourced from the records of the Race Relations Department of the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries, housed at the Amistad Research Center in New Orleans, this resource provides access to a wealth of documents highlighting different responses to the challenges of overcoming prejudice, segregation and racial tensions. These range from survey material, including interviews and statistics, to educational pamphlets, administrative correspondence, and photographs and speeches from the Annual Race Relations Institutes.

More News March 02, 2020

Today, UCR Information Technology Solutions (ITS) introduced a new Virtual Private Network (VPN) for campus use.

This new network (Palo Alto GlobalProtect) is scheduled to replace the existing campus VPN solution (Cisco AnyConnect) effective May 1, 2020. Updated information: the campus Cisco AnyConnect VPN is decommissioned as of July 1, 2020.

Why is UCR introducing a new campus VPN?

Palo Alto’s GlobalProtect VPN offers greater security features than Cisco’s AnyConnect, including better integration with our internet firewall. It also supports multi-factor authentication (MFA) and enforces our security policy.

When will the new VPN be available?

The new GlobalProtect VPN will be available to use starting on March 2, 2020. There will be a window of time open for users to make the transition to GlobalProtect before AnyConnect is disabled. However, Campus VPN users are highly encouraged to begin using the new GlobalProtect VPN soon after it becomes available and report any issues they encounter.

When will the current VPN be decommissioned?

Update: ITS has extended the decommission deadline for the AnyConnect VPN. To better support remote teaching and working, the AnyConnect VPN will now be decommissioned on July 1, 2020. This overlap is meant to allow users ample time to transition to using the new VPN successfully.

If VPN users experience any access or connection issues while using the GlobalProtect VPN, please have them reach out to UCR BearHelp by calling 909-537-4848 (IT4U) or email at BearHelp@ucr.edu.

More News September 25, 2024

We are excited to announce Dr. Raymond Uzwyshyn is our new Director of Research Services.

Ray joined us on Monday, September 9 and brings a wealth of experience and a distinguished academic research background, including a Ph.D. from New York University, MLIS from the University of Western Ontario, and an MBA (IT Project Management) from American Public University.  

Before joining us, Ray served as Research Impact Coordinator (full professor) at Mississippi and Texas State University Libraries. His work involved supporting the academic research lifecycle through development of digital research ecosystems, AI possibilities for research across departments and supporting and developing innovative digital systems, projects, and infrastructures for faculty and graduate students’ research.  

Ray shares what sparked his interest in the Director of Research Services position here at the UCR Library, "I was quite intrigued by this position's unique technological focus for research directions and current wealth of new digital and IT innovation possible this way. I'm a huge believer in new technologies and enabling the university scholarly community with these new infrastructures for communicating, collaborating and enabling research."

Ray hopes to continue to shape the Research Services department into an innovative and interdisciplinary service infrastructure where staff expertise and cutting-edge technologies—such as AI, augmented and virtual reality, data, digital research archives and multimedia—can empower faculty and student research directions to create national level best-in-class projects.

Outside of his professional work, Ray has longstanding interests in the humanities and the arts. "I still have a passion for film, art history, literature and the socio-historical valences of media, more recently—everything AI and new media," Ray says. He also enjoys hiking, yoga, meditation, strength training, and jogging to maintain work/life balance with academic and creative pursuits.

We are thrilled to welcome Ray to our team and look forward to the exciting contributions he will bring to the UCR Library and the UCR research community.  

More News November 22, 2017

Digitization Project Coordinator Charlotte Dominguez grew up hearing her father exclaim, “There’s Sherman!” whenever they drove past the Sherman Indian High School in Riverside, CA.

Little did she know that one day, she would be part of a monumental, two-year collaborative project between the Sherman Indian Museum and UCR Library’s Inland Empire Memories initiative,  that was made possible by a grant received from the Council on Library and Information Resources’ Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives: Enabling New Scholarship through Increasing Access to Unique Materials program.  

Dominguez joined the library team in mid-July 2017. Since September, she and her three Sherman Indian High School student workers Kassie, Marisa, and Koby have been busy digitizing Sherman’s archival materials and preparing them for online publication via Calisphere.

“It's kind of like a treasure hunt because you never know what you're going to see,” Dominguez said. “I really like seeing the pictures of the younger kids. After you see the same face four or five times, you start to get attached.”

The photographs and archival documents that Dominguez and her team are digitizing depict a cultural odyssey that spans many decades, rich with the history of local Native American people as well as those who have come to study at Sherman from all over the continental United States. They chronicle the early days of the Sherman Institute, years when it served as a vocational school, and the era after 1970, when it became Sherman Indian High School. “The school has a really solid cultural program, and that's a really big draw for a lot of the kids,” Dominguez explained.

The project aims to not only preserve and increase access to these materials online, but also to help Sherman Indian High School students gain valuable, hands-on work experience with handling, digitizing, and creating descriptive metadata for cultural heritage materials.

Work experience can be hard to come by for boarding school students, who aren't allowed to leave campus without supervision from their parents or school staff. Dominguez explained, “One of the main goals of this project is to give the Sherman students a chance to learn skills that they can use in the future and allow them to be less financially dependent on their families. For all of them, it's their first real job.”

Koby said that he enjoys learning about Sherman’s history while working with the photos and seeing how fashion trends and hairstyles changed over the decades. Kassie enjoys the digitization process. “It’s fun to enlarge the scans to see the hidden details,” she said.

Their goal is to digitize an estimated 10,000 items and complete descriptions for each so that they can be indexed by search engines when made available online. To date, they have digitized over 2,000 items and finished the accompanying metadata for 1,200 of those files. That puts them on target to complete the project on-time by the summer of 2019.

These three students will work with Dominguez until the end of this semester, and then she will train four new students over the next term. “I made the decision to rotate the kids in conjunction with the museum curator, Lori (Lorene Sisquoc),” Dominguez explained. “We wanted to make sure as many kids as possible had the experience, if they wanted it.”

Once published online, this collection will be a valuable resource to researchers worldwide, as well as to Sherman Indian High School alumni. “A lot of the researchers who come here are doing genealogy, or they're alumni looking for things to show their kids or grandkids, and a lot of them can't travel like they used to,” Dominguez said. “So having things published online will be so useful to them.”

They are also hoping to crowd-source captions and other identifying details for the photographs. “Lori is hoping that, once these get published, family members or maybe even the alumni themselves will come forward and say, ‘Hey, that's me!’ or, ‘Hey, that's my aunt!’ and help us put names to these faces.”

Dominguez said that the Sherman Indian Museum and the UCR Library project team plan to share information about what the project has accomplished, how they plan to use it, and why they did it within both the Native American and academic communities.

More News May 31, 2018

Starting on July 16, 2018, how you access library materials will look and feel different.

On this date the UCR Library will launch an enhanced library catalog with a modern, mobile-responsive visual display and new search tools.

The new library catalog (formerly known as “Scotty”) will have a streamlined user experience with improved access to library materials and more intuitive ways for you to discover new content.

New features include:

• Combined access to both print materials and online licensed e-resources
• Easy-to-tailor search results using active content filters in the sidebar
• Book and journal cover image previews
• Table of contents previews
• Full text access to digital items when searching through the on-campus network

We invite you to preview the new search interface starting today. This preview will give you a taste of the new search capabilities, although not all the functions of the catalog are implemented yet.

Millions of records are currently being migrated and/or modified as part of this transition. We expect to have the new library catalog fully functional on July 16, 2018.

If you have questions or comments, please email them to library@ucr.edu or use the comment form on the library website.