Clemson and Furman Partner to Host Upstate Digital Collections
The South Carolina Digital Library (SCDL) is the organization responsible for providing a single point of access to digital collections across the state. Since its founding, over a decade ago, Clemson University has provided resources, scanning, and collection building services to all SCDL cultural heritage institutions in the Upstate. Until recently, they also hosted digital collections for these institutions on the software CONTENTdm.
In 2017, Clemson formalized a commitment with Furman to host these digital collections in Furman’s cloud-hosted version of CONTENTdm. Fifteen SCDL collections from Upstate institutions such as Greenville County Library System, the Pendleton District Commission, and Southern Wesleyan University were moved from Clemson’s old servers into Furman’s new cloud servers.
To provide the most current and intuitive experience for its users, the Digital Collections Center upgraded to the latest version of the CONTENTdm website in December 2017. Visually, the new website is quite different than its predecessor. It offers a cleaner, less cluttered design that really showcases the content of the collections with big, bold graphics. The new site also operates over HTTPS, providing more privacy and security for users. Additionally, the website is designed to be more accessible to users with disabilities compared to previous versions. Finally, the website is built to work effectively on all Internet capable devices. Users no longer have to pinch and zoom or scroll horizontally when trying to access the collections on tablets or phones.
Even though these SCDL digital collections are now hosted online by Furman, Upstate institutions will still work with Clemson in scanning, metadata/resource support, and building collections while Furman will graciously provide the software that makes the digital collections available online.
