A short introduction to the CTDA and its content, focused primarily on resources in maritime history and society.

1. The Connecticut Digital Archive
Serving Connecticut’s cultural heritage community since 2013
September, 2016
Greg Colati, AUL for Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Curation
Jennifer Eustis, CTDA Content Administrator

2. Cyberinfrastructure and the Human Record
“Digital cultural heritage resources are a fundamental
dataset for the humanities…
… combined with computer networks and software tools,
[they] now shape the way that scholars [and all interested
people] discover and make sense of the human record…
… [and] the way their findings are communicated to
students, colleagues, and the general public.”
"The Report of the American Council of Learned Societies Commission on
Cyberinfrastructure for the Humanities and Social Sciences." American
Council of Learned Societies (2006)

3. The Dilemma of Modern Preservation
2016 2???
?
How do we insure that resources that support inquiry and research that exist in digital
form today, will reliably exist and be discoverable in the future?

4. CTDA
A state-wide program of the
University of Connecticut Library that
preserves, manages, and makes
available permanently valuable
cultural data and other records
produced and collected by non-profit
educational, cultural, and memory
institutions based in Connecticut

5. CTDA Development
• Phase I: Infrastructure Building
(2011- )
• Phase II: Collection Building
(2013- )
• Phase III: Connection Building
(2016- )

6. The CTDA in 2013
• One institution: University of
Connecticut, Special Collections
and Archives
• One collection: Thomas J. Dodd
Nuremberg trial papers
• Approx. 20,000 digital objects:
text documents of the
Nuremberg trial team
• One presentation layer:
archives.lib.uconn.edu

7. The CTDA in 2016
• 40+ Institutions: Libraries,
Archives, Museums, Historical
Societies, Higher Ed, K-12
Education, State Agencies.
• Hundreds of collections in a
broad spectrum of subjects from
Algae to Zulus
• More than 300,000 digital
objects: texts, images, video,
audio, data sets, and more …
• Multiple presentation outlets: 5
web sites, indexing in
aggregators: ResearchIT
(formerly iConn), DPLA (soon),
links in connecticuthistory.org,
and more

8. New London
Search for "New London"
• 4,000 results
• 6 different formats
• 17 different institutions

9. Thames
• 373 results
• 5 formats
• 9 institutions
• 20+ place names
• 20+ topics

10. Ft. Griswold
• 45 results
• 2 formats
• 7 institutions

11. Hempstead House
Connecticut Historical Society

12. Fort Trumbull
•Landscape paintings, Lyman
Allyn Museum
•Oral history transcripts from
UConn
•Hurricane damage, 1938, CT
State Archives

13. Submarines
•Documents, Robert Simmons
Papers, UConn
•Submarine Construction, Groton,
1958, Hartford Public Library

14. High Society
• Broadside, CHS
• Thames Club house, 1890, Mystic Seaport
• NYNH&H Railroad Steam Car, UConn
A self-propelled rail car
Smoke talk: a social meeting
accompanied by smoking (OED)

15. Famous Families
•Nathaniel Shaw
Correspondence, Connecticut
Historical Society
•Shaw-Perkins Mansion, Mystic
Seaport

16. CTDA Development
• Phase I: Infrastructure Building
(2011- )
• Phase II: Collection Building
(2013- )
• Phase III: Connection Building
(2016- )

17. Thank you!
Greg Colati
University of Connecticut Library
greg@uconn.edu
Jennifer Eustis
University of Connecticut Library
jennifer.eustis@uconn.edu
http://collections.ctdigitalarchive.org