Faculty Collaborations

Example: Leonardo’s Library.

Spotlight exhibits are collaborative in nature, and a great example of this is an exhibit that was the result of a two-year joint effort between History Professor Paula Findlen and a core team of graduate students and Stanford Libraries staff. Two co-taught seminars in 2018 were the impetus behind a physical exhibit that was held in the Bing Wing of Stanford’s Green Library in 2019, which featured early printed books and medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. The resulting Spotlight exhibit provides an online record and features images from the exhibit that outlast the ephemeral nature of the courses and the physical exhibit. Collaboration with faculty and students in the creation of Spotlight exhibits provides an opportunity to highlight research with essays, digitized materials, and videos.

Documenting activism and social justice

Example: Say Their Names – No More Names.

Stanford Libraries’ commitment to showcasing and documenting social justice issues is represented in many Spotlight exhibits. Creators of exhibits are able to bring to light historical documentation from social movements in the immediate community and around the world. The Queer @ Stanford exhibit compiles in one place and provides browse categories for historical materials related to queer life on campus. The creators of the exhibit explain, “primary source material found in this exhibit provide evidence that queer life always existed in and around the Stanford community.”

Spotlight is useful for presenting materials quickly and efficiently, and as such it serves to help scholars and activists document their work in close to real time. The Say Their Names – No More Names exhibit seeks to document the names of people who were recently killed by police violence and uplift their stories so that “discussions can take place, questions can be raised, solutions debated, and most importantly that the individuals… are not forgotten.” Scholars and librarians can work with communities directly to document, share and encourage dialog about injustices and critical conversations.

Documentation from Witness, a non-profit dedicated to helping people protect and defend human rights using video and technology, and this American Civil Liberties Union site provide information on best practices to consider when displaying faces and other personally identifying information of people who are participating in protests or direct actions.

Gathering place

Example: Research from Stanford University.

Using Spotlight is an excellent way to provide access to Stanford Digital Repository (SDR) content that exists in many different collections, or for which a clear path to identifying these materials in the library catalog, SearchWorks, is less obvious. One example of this is the Research from Stanford University exhibit. This exhibit showcases research data from across the university. These data sets encompass topics from a diverse range of scholarly disciplines and have been deposited in over 30 different collections. Finding all of it in the online library catalog can be tricky. This exhibit provides an easy entry point for anyone interested in an overview of the scope of Stanford research data contained in the SDR.

Instructional aid

Example: Maps 101.

Methods for navigating and utilizing our vast collections here at Stanford Libraries can be intimidating for our users, but Spotlight is an excellent platform for creating visual instructional aids on any given subject. The Maps 101 exhibit was created in response to receiving feedback from students and instructors indicating they feel unsure where to start with utilizing maps for educational purposes. A number of basic pain points were identified through this feedback which then guided the design of the exhibit. Five feature pages were created to explain and demonstrate key concepts to understanding maps and how they can be used in instruction or research. Within these feature pages, other elements such as fun graphics, custom guides, embedded viewers, and interactive skills tests were included to create an engaging experience for users. Additionally, several browse categories were created for popular topics, facilitating the categorization of maps in the exhibit to introduce users to navigating our collections. This user-centric Spotlight exhibit has been a great resource for connecting with instructors and students while also empowering them to discover and utilize our collections on their own terms.

Multilingual

Example: Mario Paci: An Italian Maestro in China.

Stanford Libraries collects materials in many languages, as well as content relevant to many different cultures. Providing context around these materials in multiple languages helps to improve access to those diverse audiences for whom these materials may be particularly relevant. Spotlight provides capabilities for creating a single exhibit in multiple different languages. Translations of common user interface elements are provided for a core set of languages and additional translated material can be provided by the exhibit creator. Metadata for repository objects is displayed in the language in which it was catalogued. Our first dual-language exhibit is Mario Paci: An Italian Maestro in China, which centers on the life and work of the Italian pianist and conductor who had a major impact on the development of Western classical music performance in China in the early 20th century. This exhibit is available in both English and Chinese.

Non-repository content

Example: Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky Papers.

Spotlight can also be used to highlight content that is not hosted in the Stanford Digital Repository (SDR). The Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky Papers is an example of this kind of exhibit. It provides significant context around the papers in this archival collection, including their history and significance. Held by the Archives, History & Records Office of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the exhibit serves to illuminate Panofsky’s life, career, and contributions as international science advisor and arms control advocate. When an exhibit is created in this manner, outside of SDR, fewer features are available, and the search feature is not as robust.

Partnership

Example: The 1947 Partition Archive.

Stanford Libraries frequently partners with other academic and cultural heritage institutions to make available important scholarly collections. The 1947 Partition Archive exhibit highlights just such a partnership — in this case, to gather and preserve the oral histories of individuals who lived through the 1947 Partition of the Indian subcontinent. The collection includes over 9,000 interviews conducted from 12 countries and recorded in 22 languages that document the life stories of witnesses to this event. Efforts like this often require the cooperation of numerous individuals, and this one is no exception. The collaboration is shepherded by a Stanford Libraries curator, who serves to steward both the project and the relationship with The Partition Archive. Interviews were organized by the The Partition Archive and conducted by trained volunteers, Stanford Libraries preserves these materials, and the Spotlight exhibit provides context for those materials and makes them more accessible to a wider audience.

Physical exhibit companion

Example: The Universe of Maps – Opening the David Rumsey Map Center.

Not surprisingly, Spotlight is also the perfect way to create an exhibit that is a companion to an exhibit of physical objects. The Universe of Maps – Opening the David Rumsey Map Center exhibit is an example of this kind of use case. Pages within the digital exhibit reflect the major sections and individual cases of the physical exhibit. Images show the exhibit objects that were on display, while explanatory text reflects descriptions that accompanied those objects while they were on exhibit for people to view. An advantage of creating a digital exhibit companion is that this visual and textual record of the physical exhibit will persist long after the physical items are removed from the exhibit space.

Oral history

Example: Tibet Oral History Project

Spotlight is well-suited for exhibiting and providing access to oral history recordings and their associated information. The Tibet Oral History Project, an initiative started in 2003 by Dr. Marcella Adamski from a suggestion by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, is one example. This project seeks to document “life in Tibet before, during, and after the imposition of Communist rule by the People’s Republic of China in 1951,” including diasporic Tibetans. Spotlight enables access to interviews through faceted browsing, allowing categorization by interviewees, interview location, topic, and keyword tagging. In addition, it offers the exhibit creator additional descriptive fields to add personal stories or cite scholarly research, augmenting the actual recordings with additional context.

International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF)

Example: Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps.

Stanford Libraries is a Founding Member and active participant in the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF), a standardized method for enhancing the delivery of images or audio/visual files in a web browser. Cultural institutions that apply IIIF to their digital objects enable users to explore and research media in a manner that transcends institutional boundaries, while also putting features such as deep zoom, comparison, and annotation into their hands. An example of this framework can be viewed in the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps exhibit, where historical map collections have been brought together from Stanford Libraries and the Library of Congress, another institution utilizing IIIF. While Stanford Libraries does have several hundred Sanborn maps for California, the Library of Congress holds many others that fill gaps existing in our own collection. By using a IIIF collection manifest, all of the California Sanborn maps held by the Library of Congress were ported into this exhibit; the Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Jackson, Amador County, California is an example of how a Library of Congress map appears and can be viewed within Spotlight. By utilizing IIIF in a Spotlight exhibit, collections from around the world can be connected in one place, providing comprehensive viewing and research experiences for users.

Narrative

Example: Images of Rome.

One of Spotlight’s main features is the ability of exhibit creators to not only gather together digital objects but to provide context around those objects. Spotlight enables exhibit creators to group content in meaningful ways and provide supplementary text that explains their place in a larger scholarly environment. The Images of Rome exhibit includes information about print and digital collections regarding the archaeologist Rodolfo Lanciani, as well as statistics on the artists, media, and age of the collection. Scholarly essays included in the exhibit help patrons better understand the history of archaeology and architecture in Rome. This exhibit includes a geospatial narrative as well, identifying each item’s location on a current-day map of Rome.

Timeline

Example: Stanford Stories from the Archives and timeline.

Some content lends itself well to exploration over time. The materials found in the Stanford Stories from the Archives exhibit are just such a set of materials. This online exhibit and its companion physical exhibit were created to celebrate the 125th anniversary of Stanford and feature stories about student life over the full 125 years of the university’s existence. One of the ways to browse through these materials is via a Decade by Decade timeline that allows users to see materials and read about significant events and themes from student life that marked each of these decades.