Digital Collections: New online access for BC treasures

Special Collections Online: a new search interface

Our new discovery layer to find and access digitized special collections, Special Collections Online (SCO), is now live at Boston College Libraries Special Collections Online

This new Beta site is a vast improvement for searching our scanned special collections, including photographs, rare books, manuscripts and other archival material from the BC Libraries. The speed of searching, and faceting of results, bring the look and feel up-to-date and offers a more responsive and intuitive user experience.

The current “soft launch” will allow faculty, staff, students, and other interested users an opportunity to test and comment on the new tool before the previous interface is replaced in early May. You are encouraged to submit comments and feedback to mckelvee.bclsco.info@bc.edu. The full public release will take place in early May.

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Online users will find Boston College collections much easier to find. BC Libraries has further increased access to our digitized special collections by depositing metadata into the Digital Commonwealth. The Digital Commonwealth is a collection of digitized cultural heritage materials held by Massachusetts libraries, museums, historical societies, and archives. The site provides access to thousands of images, documents and sound recordings.

The Digital Commonwealth is also the Massachusetts hub for the Digital Library of America. Depositing our content into Digital Commonwealth means that we also gain exposure in the DPLA site at dp.la. The DPLA interface provides access to over 11,000,000 items digitized by organizations across the United States.