UCLA Digitization Project: AIDS Posters

UCLA created the digital AIDS Poster Collection as a joint venture between its Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library and its History and Special Collections Division. The collection consists of 625 posters from 44 countries and the University hopes to continually expand these statistics. Because the collection is affiliated with a library, it seems to consider access as its prime motivation for the digitization of these prints. According to David Gere, director of the ArtlGlobal Health Center at UCLA

"You can see some of the best graphic interventions in global health, as well as some of the worst, but the important thing is that all 619 posters are readily available at the touch of a button, to be seen and studied by any researcher with access to the net."

As far as adhering to the collection principles outlined by A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections, because the site is affiliated with a major university, it seems to have done a thorough job.

• On the site's homepage, there is a link to UCLA Digital Library Program. The link provides access to digitization criteria and description of an explicit collection development policy that has been agreed upon and documented before digitization begins.
• Similarly, from the homepage, users can link to an "about" section which describes plainly and in simple language the characteristics of the collection, including scope, format, how the collection was acquired, and how they intend users to interact with it.
• The collection addresses sustainability by expressing its desire to expand the project although it does not explicitly explain how it is funded or how it plans to fund this future expansion.
• The collection is pretty easy to access. However, the site does not explicitly address how it intends to meet the needs of those with dissabilites.

• In the sites copyright link, problems of intellectual property are discussed. Because of the project's commitment to accessibility, an "opt-out" section is made easily available to those with copyright and access issues concerning their own intellectual property.

Secondly, in addressing object characteristics, the site does a good job of explaining where it obtained each object and where the originals are kept.

• Metadata associated with each print also gives call numbers for the orginal's present location within the UCLA library system , the name of the originating institution, as well as any additional information associated with the print that is not appearant from simple digitization. This meticulous cataloging of metadata further ensures the object's authenticity and access.
  
• However, I was unable to figure out what method of digitization the institution utilizes or how they intend to ensure long-term URL access and consistentcy.

To further elaborate on metadata, the site's meticulous documentation of each piece through associated tags and descriptions makes searching for posters easier than on many other collection sites dedicated to digitizing posters. In fact, according to UCLA's own digitization criteria resources page, metadata encoding and transmission standards are at the heart of project's mission.

Overall, the site is easy to navigate and offers a rich digital resource on the topic to which it is dedicated.