About the Digital Collections

The Barnard Digital Collections platform is the primary website for engaging with digitized and digital materials from the Barnard Archives and Special Collections. The items on this site represent a small fraction of the Archives' complete collections, including many highly requested and frequently used materials. We encourage you to contact us with any research inquiries and see our finding aids site to search over descriptions of our collections.

The Digital Collections are built using the open-source Archipelago platform.

Using the Digital Collections

The Barnard Digital Collections are comprised of digital objects. You can view these objects as part of their archival collections; you can also browse all objects and search using the search bar on the front page and in the top banner of the site or the advanced search page

Refine your search results by date created, creator, topic, format, archival collection, and if the item is in the public domain, among other facets.

Not all objects in the digital collections have extensive topic keywords; for example, issues of the Barnard Bulletin are full-text searchable but have very minimal keywords and other metadata.

Using the search bar on the front page and at the top of the site, you can search on all of the objects in the digital collections—both descriptions of those objects as well as full-text (of print materials as well as transcripts of audiovisual materials) where available. Many full-text results are generated automatically: print materials like The Mortarboard are scanned using optical character recognition (OCR), and audiovisual materials like the tapes of the Scholar and Feminist Conference are transcribed using automated transcription tools. Where possible, we have corrected these full-text results, but in many cases they will contain errors. This means that your searches may miss relevant results and include irrelevant results.

On object pages, you will see a viewer for the object, metadata describing the object, and a button allowing you to select files to download. Please email archives@barnard.edu with a link to the item in question if you need different versions of files or run into any issues with downloads.

Reproducing Items and Permissions

Materials in the digital collections are made available for educational and scholarly use. We are starting to add standardized rights metadata to items in the digital collections to indicate how you may reuse items and what sort of permission, if any, you need to do so.

Public Domain/No Known U.S. Copyright Restrictions

We believe that these items, marked as No copyright - United States, are in the public domain under the laws of the United States. In the United States, you do not need Barnard's permission to use items. However, these items may be subject to other countries' copyright laws, rights of privacy, publicity, or other restrictions depending on the format of the materials and what the items depict. You are responsible for your own use.

Though it is not required, we request that you credit public domain items with, "From the Barnard Archives and Special Collections," and provide a link back to each item on the digital collections website. Doing so helps us understand how our collections are being used and helps us justify resources for additional digitization and release of items on the digital collections

In Copyright

We believe that these items, marked as In Copyright, are protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use these items in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. You may want to consult the Columbia University Libraries guide to fair use. For other uses you would need to obtain permission from rights holders, which may be Barnard College or other creators. 

If you need information about reusing these items or are seeking rights holders, please contact us at archives@barnard.edu with a link to the item in question(s).

Copyright Status Undefined

Not all items in the digital collections have been reviewed for copyright status. For unmarked items, we do not grant or deny permission for reuse. You may want to look into resources that can help you determine on your own whether the items are in the public domain—and therefore free of copyright restrictions—including the Columbia University Libraries guide to fair use and the Cornell guide to Copyright and the Public Domain.

If materials are not in the public domain, it is your responsibility to determine and satisfy copyright or other use restrictions when publishing or otherwise using the materials. You are solely responsible for determining whether your use of any digital object requires the permission of any other person or entity, or determining whether you can exercise fair use rights. 

If you need information about reusing these items or are seeking rights holders, please contact us at archives@barnard.edu with a link to the item(s) in question.

Metadata

Barnard Digital Collections metadata records are released under a Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication and can be freely reproduced. For information about accessing our data via an API or OAI-PMH, contact us at archives@barnard.edu.

Contact and Takedown Requests

If you have comments, suggestions, or questions, please contact us at archives@barnard.edu.

If you are a rights holder and believe your materials have been added to the Digital Collections website without your permission, or if you have any other concerns about the materials available on the site, please contact us at archives@barnard.edu, including a link to the item(s) in question and the reason you wish to have the material removed.

Acknowledgements 

We gratefully acknowledge funders who have made sharing materials on the digital collections possible:

  • Jessica Schwartz (BC 2013) and the Schwartz Family, whose funding made possible the digitization of Barnard's yearbook, the Mortarboard
  • Alice Schreyer '68, whose funding supported the processing and transcription of materials in the Hawa Tunkara '21 FLI Story Collection
  • The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), whose Recordings at Risk grant made possible the digitization of audiocassette recordings from the Scholar and Feminist Conference
  • The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), whose funding made possible the digitization of alum scrapbooks

The Barnard Digital Collections are made possible by the labor of student archives assistants, graduate fellows, developers, archivists, and many others in the Islandora community and beyond. We thank all of those who have worked on the Digital Collections:

  • Elana Altman, Associate Director for UX & Academic Technologies, 2018-present
  • Kaya Alim, Student Archives Associate, 2019-2022
  • Kyara Andrade, Student Archives Associate, 2017
  • Jo Chiang, Student Archives Associate, 2014-15
  • Jessica Cruz, Student Archives Associate, 2016-17
  • Cristy Danford, Academic Systems Technologist, 2022-present
  • Cristina Fontánez Rodríguez, Graduate Fellow, 2016-17
  • Che Gossett, BCRW Community Archivist, 2015-19
  • Takesha Graham, Student Archives Associate, 2014
  • Alice Griffin, Student Archives Associate, 2012-15
  • Dinah Handel, Graduate Fellow, 2014-15
  • Alex Hastings, Student Archives Associate, 2015-16
  • Nazia Jannat, Student Archives Associate, 2012-14
  • Cleo Levin, Student Archives Associate, 2014
  • Marko Krkeljas, Senior Software & Applications Developer, 2018-present
  • Stephanie Mannheim, Student Archives Assistant, 2011-14
  • Emma May, Student Archives Assistant, 2016-2017
  • Marya McQuirter, Graduate Fellow, 2018-19
  • Obden Mondésir, Associate Director, Archives, 2021-present
  • Kiani Ned, Student Archives Assistant, 2016
  • Shannon O'Neill, Director, Archives, 2012-2019
  • Hilary Price, Graduate Fellow, 2014-15
  • Tamsin Ramjit, Student Archives Assistant, 2015-2019
  • Ben Rosner, Instructional Applications Developer, 2015-2021
  • Dillon Savage, Instructional Applications Developer, 2014-16
  • Hannah Sistrunk, Graduate Fellow, 2016-17
  • Martha Tenney, Director, Archives, 2013-present
  • Eva Vaillancourt, Archives Assistant, 2016