7 tips for using the Glenbow Digital Collection

Students celebrate the last day of school, Calgary, Alberta.

Search, select favourites, and order Glenbow photos

We are excited to announce that Glenbow Library and Archives digital content is now on our new Digital Collections site. This site is a one-stop for searching, researching, and following your favourite topics from all our digital collections, including the Glenbow. It also provides many helpful features, including some you have asked for during the past year and a half like searching by photograph or creator.

Libraries and Cultural Resources began looking for a new digital asset management system for our digital collections two years ago. We wanted a system that could provide modern features for our users. Last year, we started to implement Cortex from Orange Logic, and now, we add new collections every month.

The item view of a photograph (NA-2696-6) in the Glenbow Library and Archives digital collection.

A zoomed view of a photograph (NA-2696-6) from the Glenbow Library and Archives digital collection.

But what about the old site?

We will keep our old Glenbow Library and Archives digital collection site up during May. We want to give people a chance to get used to the new site and offer feedback on the change. At the end of May, we will shut down the old site.

If you loved the old site and can’t find a favourite feature in our new collection, let us know; we would love to hear your feedback. Feel free to email digitize@ucalgary.ca with what isn’t (or is) working for you.

New features

Our new site comes packed with features that will help you discover and use our digital objects, request more access, and engage with our digital content. Here are some features that we think will interest you:

1) Creating an account

Our open-access descriptions and content are available to anyone. To start creating lists of your favourites or to order content, we recommend creating an account.

2) Precise searches

If you are a “Google” searcher or someone who likes to do a deep dive using precise searches, we can meet your needs. You can jump into our collection with phrase searching and filtering based on common search terms, including resource type, creator, or collection. If you would like to build more precise searches, try our advanced search.

3) Subscribe to topics of interest

When you find an item you like and want to know when we add more in that subject area, right-click, and subscribe to that term. You’ll automatically get updates whenever we make changes or add to our collections of your favourite subjects.

4) Sending us feedback

If you find an item and want to ask us a question about it or send us more details, we want to hear from you. You’ll find an “Ask a Question” button on every item that you can use to send us an email.

5) Creating lightboxes

Do you love making lists? A lightbox is your personal list-making feature in Digital Collections. You can create unlimited lightboxes for each of your research topics, and you can share these lightboxes with others!

6) Checking usage rights and restrictions

How can you use the objects that you find in our digital collections? From the homepage and along the bottom of every page, you can see our general terms and conditions for all objects in our digital collections. If we have extra rights or restrictions on individual objects, you will be able to view that for each object when you select it under the “How can I use this object?” panel.

7) Ordering high-resolution copies

When you find an item you like in our Digital Collections, you may want to request more access than you currently have. You can use the “Add to Cart” button for items that the library can provide upon request, when possible, or direct you to the copyright holder. The Orders area manages your orders so that you can keep track of your order history and correspond with us about your order progress.

Glenbow Library and Archives