University of Warwick provides Web access to 18th century drama

The University of Warwick, one of the UK’s leading universities, has one of the most significant collections of 19th century French plays. The whole collection comprises over 4000 French language plays covering the period from 1820 to 1900.

The University decided that this unique material, some of which is not even available digitally from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, needed to be digitized in order to preserve, improve usability and widen access to create a truly international collection.

After assessing four digital collection management solutions available, the University chose and implemented OCLC’s CONTENTdm® Digital Collection Management Software. CONTENTdm is a complete solution for storing, managing and delivering a library’s digital collections to the Web.

Stuart Hunt, Data Services Manager at the University, explains, “We selected CONTENTdm for its versatility in the types of media that it could handle, the speed at which a collection could be built up and its value for money. Value for money was an important factor as it meant that the library could carry out more digitization work within the budget we had without sacrificing functionality.”

Where once academics and researchers had to leaf through very old and fragile copies of the scripts, they now have online access to fully searchable digital copies via CONTENTdm as well as WorldCat.org. The collection has become more widely accessible outside of the physical library.

Hunt continues, “CONTENTdm made it easy to quickly establish a digital presence for selected parts of our special collections. It is an essential tool in exposing our research collections in French post-revolutionary drama. We are now able to provide full-text access to materials where previously this was not possible. To date, the digitized collection represents 10% of the entire collection. We see this as an on-going project that we will continue with until we complete digitizing all of the material we want to cover.”

To learn more about the University of Warwick's project, please view the case study.

(2008 08 12)