The Disciples of Christ Historical Society is pleased to announce our new partnership with JSTOR to preserve and provide access to its digitized and born-digital collection materials. This month, the archives team began implementing JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services, an integrated suite of tools built to manage digital assets from initial upload to long-term preservation to online user access. The implementation of JSTOR represents a turning point for the Historical Society. While we were previously able to provide access to digital materials, we did not have the capacity to responsibly preserve and steward them in perpetuity, strengthening and expanding our digital offerings.
Additionally, the Historical Society has joined the Tier 3 charter program, which provides us access to JSTOR’s award-winning AI-assisted collection processing tool and membership in a community of archivists collaboratively developing best practices and responsible workflows for AI-assisted description. “Our archival team is small, and AI-assisted description could dramatically increase our capacity to provide online access to digitized collection materials,” said Colleen McFarland Rademaker, Senior Archivist at DCHS.
Moving collections into a new digital platform is like moving personal possessions into a new apartment or house – it requires forethought and time. In both cases, a speedy move is not necessarily a successful move, especially when it comes to locating things in your new home. We therefore ask for your patience as we move into JSTOR Digital Stewardship over the coming year. The digital collections previously available through Digital Commons are now available on a temporary digital access page on the Historical Society website. As we begin to build the new digital repository, we will focus initially on new digital content that links to Spencer, the archival catalog. Over time, we will migrate the files on the temporary digital access page into the new digital repository as well.
If you have any questions about the JSTOR Digital Stewardship Services implementation or have any difficulty accessing our legacy digital collections, do not hesitate to contact us. We will be happy to assist you.