The UCLA Library has launched an innovative and forward-looking initiative to capture ephemeral content with global partners. Through this project, UCLA Library endeavors to build international and global collections of knowledge and to preserve the historical and cultural record so that present and future generations can access and use ephemera that document the larger arena of discourse that takes place alongside mainstream media and scholarly publications.
At present, in this website we present collections with content from Armenia, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, and South Africa ranging from fragile early 20th century newspapers to posters, postcards, cellphone videos, and much more.
These collections represent significant content that was used during political movements, but that is ephemeral in nature and likely to be lost without proactive curation.
The International Digitizing Ephemera Project (IDEP) is developing methods to capture and preserve new forms of knowledge, records, and content.
IDEP Toolkit
The IDEP Toolkit provides guidelines, best practices, and hands-on documentation for a digitization project. It includes metadata guidelines, best practices for file naming and data structure, print and audiovisual digitization documentation, and a checklist for a digitization session.
The toolkit is available in Arabic, Armenian, English and Spanish: