Rare Oceanography Collections at UCSD Now Digitized

About 100,000 volumes from Scripps Library, mostly in public domain, now available

Lisa Carlucci Thomas -- Library Journal, 05/27/2010

• 50% of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library digitized
• Material available via Google Books and HathiTrust
• Aim to enhance teaching and research and improve discoverability

Approximately 100,000 volumes, nearly half of the collection of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) have been digitized, thanks to the university’s participation in the Google Books project. Items include rare volumes, journals, and scientific expedition reports, most within the public domain, published before 1923, and out of print.

Items were selected based on uniqueness, physical condition, and size. “The Scripps Library has a deep collection of expedition reports, many of which had never been digitized and were not held in other library collections,” Dolores Davies, Director of Communications, UCSD Libraries, told LJ. “[Faculty] are very excited about the greatly enhanced access to these materials and how this might help faculty to engage students on a deeper level.”

(At left, a page from The Echinoderm Fauna of Torres Strait: Its Composition and Origin, by Hubert Lyman Clark [Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1921].)

World’s largest oceanography library
The Scripps Institution of Oceanography, established in 1903, is known to be the world’s preeminent center for ocean and earth science.  Scripps has played a key role in defining the science of oceanography; Scripps scientists have pioneered research in climate change, pollution, earthquakes, and marine life and conservation.

The Scripps library, one of nine UCSD libraries, is the world’s largest library of oceanographic materials, numbering 224,000 volumes. The Scripps collection covers subjects such as oceanography, marine biology, marine geology, marine technology, climate science, and geophysics, with extensive resources in ecology, zoology, fisheries, and seismology. 

Partnerships with Google, HathiTrust
UCSD’s partnership with Google began in 2008. For now, digitized volumes are accessible via Google Book Search and the HathiTrust Digital Library, where UCSD archives the university’s copies of the digitized volumes Readers can search, view, browse, and read full texts of public domain volumes online. 

For items still under copyright, readers can access the title, author name, selected excerpts of relevant text, and information about where the book can be borrowed or purchased.

Many of the digitized items have already been integrated into the UCSD local catalog, ROGER. In addition, materials will be made accessible via the UC systemwide online catalog and WorldCat.org within the next few months, according to Davies. 

“Since Google has just completed the digitization of materials from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library, the materials are not yet fully integrated,” said Davies. “[UCSD is also] exploring the possibility of providing broader public access either through SIOExplorer [Scripps’s digital library] or a similar portal.” 

New opportunities for research, teaching, and learning
The trove presents new opportunities for research, teaching, and learning. Lisa Levin, a biological oceanographer at Scripps, utilizes the Scripps Library’s expedition reports in her teaching. Levin said the digitization of the early documents allows students and historians to better understand the evolution of modern ideas.

Librarians at Scripps are investigating how to integrate these rich digital resources into faculty teaching efforts at Scripps and elsewhere on campus, and developing instructional materials to support faculty, students, and researchers. 

“The Scripps Library has scientific journal runs going back to the early 1800s, and many have never been available in an electronic format,” noted Peter Brueggeman, director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography Library. 

Likewise, numerous research expedition reports documenting scientific observations and discoveries dating back to the 1800s are now available digitally for the first time improving discoverability for a new generation of oceanographers. “While these books and other materials have long been available on our library shelves for individual use,” said Bruggeman, “Google Books’ in-depth cross-collection searching feature is definitely a game-changer for scholarly research.”