CONTENTdm Documentation

Please use this form to request a new collection be created for you. Collection names must include your institution's full name in parentheses and cannot be more than 80 characters, including spaces. The collection name cannot include any of the following characters: \ / : * ? " < > |

This request should be submitted by your institution's CARLI Primary CONTENTdm Contact.

CONTENTdm New User Name Request Form

Please use this form for new CONTENTdm user names.

Each person at your institution that will be working in CONTENTdm must set up an individual, personalized OCLC WorldCat user name and password on the OCLC website. If you would like to create a general-use user name (e.g. "librarycdm" or "digi_staff") for your institution, you may do so but it will still need to be connected with an email address.

This form should be submitted by your institution's CARLI Primary CONTENTdm Contact.

Collection Customization Form

Request color and logo customizations for pages within your collection.

This form should be submitted by your institution's CARLI Primary CONTENTdm Contact.

Collection Homepage Customization Opportunities

Collection Publishing Request or Information Update Form

Complete this form to request that a collection in CARLI Digital Collections be published for the first time or to request changes to an already published collection's image, home page text, topic/media categories, summary, facet fields, or download options.

This form should be submitted by your institution's CARLI Primary CONTENTdm Contact.

Adding and Populating a Metadata Field in a Preexisting CONTENTdm Collection

Using the WorldCat Digital Collection Gateway in CONTENTdm

Best Practices for Digital Collections

Digital Projects 101: A Resource Guide

Recommendation for Collection-Level Bibliographic Records for CARLI Digital Collections

Guidelines for the Creation of Digital Collections: Digitization Best Practices for Images

Guidelines for the Creation of Digital Collections: Digitization Best Practices for Text

Guidelines for the Creation of Digital Collections: Digitization Best Practices for Audio

Guidelines for the Creation of Digital Collections: Digitization Best Practices for Moving Images

Guidelines for the Creation of Digital Collections: Digitization Best Practices for Three-Dimensional Objects

Guidelines for the Creation of Digital Collections: Best Practices for CARLI Digital Collections Descriptive Metadata

Guidelines for the Creation of Digital Collections: Best Practices for Shareable Metadata

Guidelines for the Promotion of Digital Collections: Best Practices for Promotion and Marketing

CARLI Digital Collections Statistics

CARLI Digital Collections Annual Collection Size reports

Usage Reports Analysis from Google Analytics

CARLI Digital Collections Monthly Statistics - Historical stats available from 2006 to April 2019 including Collection Home Page views, Saskia and Sanborn on/off-campus views, and Item views.

CONTENTdm Training

OCLC offers free, introductory CONTENTdm training. You may register for their live on-line classes, or you may view pre-recorded sessions. More information on the OCLC-hosted training can be found on their CONTENTdm Training webpage.

If you would like to have a Test Collection set up for you by CARLI to use during your training, please contact the CARLI Office. You will also need to provide CARLI with the CONTENTdm user name(s) that you would like to use for the training and while using CARLI's CONTENTdm instance. Information on how to create and submit new CONTENTdm user names can be found here: CONTENTdm New User Names Form.

Notes on the OCLC-provided training: The "Create a New Collection" portion of the first OCLC training session does not apply to CARLI member libraries, as the CARLI Office administers the Server tab for CONTENTdm and creates all new collections. CARLI members libraries are also responsible for remembering that CARLI has five required metadata fields for every item in a collection; this information is not reflected in the general OCLC training.

CARLI staff periodically conduct basic training sessions that introduce CONTENTdm to participating libraries. Information about upcoming training sessions is available from the CARLI events calendar or by contacting the CARLI Office. The exercises listed below are used in CARLI CONTENTdm training and take a user step-by-step through building a collection.

Basic CONTENTdm Training Exercises for CONTENTdm Version 6

Exercise Data (26 mb)

This Exercise Data ZIP file contains the sample images used in CARLI's basic CONTENTdm training. If you wish to use them with the CONTENTdm training exercises, simply extract the files using WinZip or a similar utility. The file structure used during the training will appear with the extracted files.

Additional exercises:

How to create Custom Queries and Results (CQRs)

Image Rights and Restrictions: Restricting Images and Creating Brands, Bands, and Watermarks

* Please note that these are secure documents and you may be prompted to log in to view them. If you have any trouble accessing the exercises, please contact the CARLI Office.

Digital Public Library of America (DPLA)

OCLC CONTENTdm Information and Support

OCLC's CONTENTdm Information Page

Browse Collections from OCLC's Global Community of CONTENTdm Users

CONTENTdm User Support Center

OCLC occasionally offers web-based overviews on using CONTENTdm and posts archived web-based training sessions on the Training & Events page of the User Support Center web site. These at these sessions are not sponsored by CARLI. They are given by OCLC for all users of CONTENTdm, and, therefore, some of the information contained in the session does not apply to our consortial environment (such as procedures for publishing a collection, creating users and collections, and server administration.) For information about how CARLI's consortial use of CONTENTdm differs from the methods shown in the OCLC Web session, please review the CARLI-specific information posted above.