Per our January 2025 announcement, we are excited to share our plans to upgrade the Online Archive of California (OAC) platform, with the goal of deploying the revamped system in June 2025. As part of the cutover, we will decommission the publication of digital objects in the upgraded OAC public interface -- however, discovery of these objects will continue to be supported by Calisphere. This page provides details about our transition plan for digital objects in OAC.
About the digital objects in OAC - no longer supported after June 2025
The OAC currently includes approximately 200,000 digital objects in the METS (Metadata and Encoding Transmission Standard) format, which are featured in the "Items" tab of search results. These legacy OAC objects were created and published in OAC between 10-20 years ago, without a direct pathway for collection stewards to update or maintain the objects.
The same set of legacy OAC objects are currently discoverable in Calisphere, which is the CDL's service supporting digital collections discovery. After June 2025, these legacy OAC objects will no longer be part of the OAC public interface.
A list of your institution’s legacy OAC objects is available in this spreadsheet (tabs 1-2): https://bit.ly/legacy-oac-objects
About the digital objects in Calisphere - continued support after June 2025
Discovery of these objects will continue to be supported by Calisphere. However, please note that Calisphere updates digital collections (content files and metadata) by harvesting directly from contributor digital collections platforms.
Please contact us if you would like to replace the Calisphere digital objects by harvesting from your local platforms, as discussed further below.
Strategy to update URLs in OAC finding aids pointing to digital objects - planned for the June 2025 cutover
You do not need to take any action for the cutover. As many of these objects are linked within finding aids (example), we will bulk update the legacy OAC object URLs in your finding aids prior to the June 2025 cutover, to instead point to their Calisphere versions. This will ensure that any published finding aids with URLs to legacy OAC objects do not break after the cutover. These updated finding aids (in EAD format) will be made available to you, if you would like to sync the EAD with your local version of record.
These OAC digital objects may be referenced in other websites that your institution maintains. If so, please consider updating these URLs to point to the Calisphere (or local) versions of record.
Would you like to replace the Calisphere digital objects by harvesting from your local platforms?
Maintaining and updating digital objects in Calisphere is dependent on refreshing metadata directly from the source record. We welcome the opportunity to discuss establishing a harvesting pipeline with your locally-managed digital collections platform, and coordinating on a schedule to replace the legacy OAC objects with the most current version of record. Please feel free to contact us to get started.
If desired, we can also provide you with copies of the legacy OAC objects (comprising the original METS metadata records and associated digital files)--please let us know!