Digital Support Services

The Digital Support Services (DSS) department supports the University of Florida Digital Collections (UFDC), providing digital collections created from Library collection materials. With rare children's literature books, unique manuscripts and letters, antique maps, museum objects, herbarium specimens, photographs, oral histories, architectural drawings, recordings of speeches and songs, videos of performances, and more, UFDC offers many resources for research and discovery from around the world. Over two hundred versions of Robinson Crusoe; over a million pages of Florida and Caribbean newspapers; and over 6,000 photographs from the University of Florida Archives are significant in that they are co-located, have a browse capability, and are cross-referenced and searchable sets. The UFDC grows by more than one million pages a year.

DSS also serves as the technical host for and partners with the Digital Library of the Caribbean and the Caribbean Newspaper Digital Library collection (both are international collaborations), the statewide Florida Digital Newspaper Library, and many other collaborative and UF-based digital collections such as Celebrating Cuba and the UF Institutional Repository. 

 The largest and most utilized collections are:

• Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC)
• Florida Digital Newspaper Library
• Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature Digital Collection
• Institutional Repository, IR@UF

In addition to supporting existing collections and materials in UFDC, DSS is also a digitization facility. It is the primary contributor to all of the collections in and hosted by UFDC, adding more unique materials regularly. The Digital Services Department also supports collaborative and innovative projects.

SobekCM provides the core infrastructure powering the collections. SobekCM is the internally designed, hosted, and supported technology that powers all aspects of the digital collections, including content management and collection management.

The Digital Support Services department is among the largest digitization facilities in the southeastern United States. The department is the hosting and technical partner for the Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC) and the Caribbean Newspaper Digital Library, two collaborative digital libraries partnering Florida and Caribbean cultural and scientific institutions. Past projects have been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities; Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; Department of Education; National Historical Publications and Records Commission; the Institute for Museum and Library Services; Florida’s LSTA program; and private endowments.