The Online Archive of California (OAC) provides free public access to detailed descriptions of primary resource collections maintained by more than 200 contributing California institutions. OAC also makes available over 170,000+ digitized items from the contributors. Contributors include libraries, special collections, archives, historical societies, and museums throughout California and collections maintained by the 10 University of California (UC) campuses.
Contributors include libraries, special collections, archives, historical societies, and museums throughout California and collections maintained by the 10 University of California (UC) campuses.
Calisphere provides free access to unique and historically important artifacts for research, teaching, and curious exploration. Discover digital collections of over 400,000 photographs, documents, letters, artwork, diaries, oral histories, films, advertisements, musical recordings, and more.
The content in Calisphere is drawn from the digital content in the Online Archive of California (OAC). These two websites exist because they serve two very different user needs. For research-oriented users who want to go beyond what is available online and locate the actual, physical item, the OAC is the best starting point. For users whose primary interest is to view digitized images and documents, Calisphere is a place to explore online content. In addition, Calisphere provides K-12 educators with a subset of content organized and aligned with California Content Standards.
Houses vast collections of specialized archival material for global studies, and provides topic guides for starting research in particular subject areas.