About Digital Collections
The University of Tennessee Libraries Digital Collections provide access to images, books, artworks, manuscripts, musical scores, videos, and oral histories. Materials come from our Special Collections including manuscripts, University Archives, Modern Political Archives, and the Great Smoky Mountains Regional Project, as well as the DeVine Music Library and the Pendergrass Agricultural and Veterinary Medicine Library. While our primary focus is on materials held in Special Collections, some digital collections are the result of collaborative efforts with other departments on campus and in the community, and a couple are hosted by partner institutions.
The University of Tennessee’s institutional repository, TRACE - Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange, provides access to scholarly works by UT faculty, staff, and graduate students, theses and dissertations, and documents from the University Archives.
Harmful content notice
The University of Tennessee Libraries recognizes our collections may contain imagery and language that may be harmful or offensive to some audiences. Although the viewpoints represented may not be consistent with the current values of the Libraries, we retain and provide access to these materials in order to document and preserve the historical record. The Libraries strives to provide descriptive context for collections in a manner that is respectful to all communities who use, create, and are represented in our collections.
Discover items
Search
On the digital collections homepage, enter keywords into the search bar to search items’ metadata and, where applicable, an item’s full text. The dropdown menu to the right of the search bar can be used to limit items to a specific material type, such as an image or text.
Results can be refined using various facets including subject, name, or date.
Browse
The digital collections homepage defaults to a grid view of all collections. Select the list view to see all collections with a brief description.
Browsing can also be limited to specific groups such as the Great Smoky Mountains Regional Project, Modern Political Archives, and University Archives.
Using items from the collection - rights and reproductions
The University of Tennessee Libraries allows the reproduction of materials from its digital collections in compliance with United States copyright law. The Libraries does not hold the copyright to most items in its collections. It is the user's responsibility to obtain permission to publish texts and facsimiles from the copyright holder(s). Our policy prohibits reproduction of an entire collection.
Citations
The format of a citation for an item within a digital collection will depend on the style manual being used. Citations should provide as much information as possible to lead other researchers to the source being cited. In general, a citation for an item in UT’s digital collections should include the following: Creator; Date of Creation; Object / Item / Image Title; Collection Name; Repository Name; Date Accessed; and Citable URL
MLA example:
Wiley, Catherine. Self portrait. Anna Catherine Wiley Sketches Collection. (n.d.). University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Libraries https://digitalcollections.lib.utk.edu/concern/images/7fbbedc4-5b11-4818-a31d-0d73d8d050ed Accessed 12 December 2019.
Purdue University’s Online Writing Lab (OWL) is an excellent resource to help with citations using MLA, APA, and Chicago styles.
Contact
If you have questions or comments about our digital collections, please contact askdi@utk.edu
All works and files related to the WPA/TVA Archaeology Photographs Collection are now restricted from access while they are under NAGPRA review, which involves ongoing consultation with Native Nations, as per UTK’s NAGPRA image policy. The NAGPRA consultation process is not a short one, and access will not resume until the consultation process is concluded. Updates will be provided on this page.
Platform
Our digital collections are managed and delivered in Hyku, an open-source software framework developed by Notch8.
Metadata
The University of Tennessee contributes its metadata beyond Islandora to a few additional platforms. Most significantly, the university has acted as a Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) service hub for the state of Tennessee since 2015. The hub, known as the Digital Library of Tennessee (DLTN), contributes over 125,000 records to dp.la. Metadata records and thumbnail images are also shared with Worldcat and the university’s local library catalog. The majority of UT digital collections’ metadata is open access and can be harvested via the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH). You can use the Digital Collections OAI endpoint, https://digitalcollections.lib.utk.edu/catalog/oai?, to pull metadata for your own uses.
Acknowledgements
The Tennessee Farm News, Tennessee Farm and Home Science, and UT Extension Special Circulars collections were digitized as part of a Project Ceres grant (2018). Project Ceres is a collaboration between the United States Agricultural Information Network (USAIN), the Agriculture Network Information Collaborative (AgNIC) and the Center for Research Libraries (CRL), which supports ongoing preservation and digitization of collections in the field of agriculture.
The World War II Oral Histories Digitization Project is a collaboration between the University of Tennessee Libraries and the University of Tennessee’s Center for the Study of War and Society (CSWS). It was made possible with a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).
The Tennessee Newspaper Digitization Project (2010-2016) - part of the Library of Congress’ National Digital Newspaper Program - was funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
The original database for Volunteer Voices: The Growth of Democracy in Tennessee was funded by a National Leadership Grant (2005-2008) from the Institute for Museum and Library Services.
From Pi Beta Phi to Arrowmont digital collection is a collaboration between the University of Tennessee Libraries, Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, and the Pi Beta Phi Elementary School. The project was made possible with support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
The partnership with the University of Georgia on Southeastern Native American Documents, 1730-1842, was made possible through a leadership grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).