History
The Carnegie Mellon University Libraries have been providing online access to digitized content since 1997. With a founding gift from the Heinz Family Foundations, the libraries embarked on a ground-breaking project to digitize and provide access to the H. John Heinz III papers, over 290,000 items and 790,000 pages of content.
Since the HELIOS (Heinz Electronic Library Interactive Online System) project, the Libraries have digitized over 2 million pages and 390,000 unique and rare items from our collections – providing comprehensive research access to researchers around the world.
While our digital collections cover a broad range of topics, our primary focus is on providing access to materials documenting the history of Carnegie Mellon University, including materials that help tell the story of computer science, artificial intelligence, and robotics.
Platform
This system is built on the Islandora 8 platform, utilizing Drupal 8 and Fedora 5. If you have questions about our implementation, please contact us.
Other Resources
Take Down and Removal
The Carnegie Mellon University Libraries have made a best faith effort to assess our responsibilities and risks related to the copyright status of all of the items in our collections, and to make those items available in alignment with best practices as established by information science professionals. Our intention is to make content available for use in research, teaching, and private study. We are always willing to discuss copyright concerns with a rights holder who finds his or her content in our collections.
If you believe an item in our repository violates your copyright or privacy, please contact us and include information on the item in question and your concern.
Accessibility
Carnegie Mellon University Libraries is committed to making the materials it provides access to as broadly accessible as possible, and to ensuring that access to its content is consistent with obligations under state and federal disabilities law, including the Americans with Disabilities Act.
If you need additional accommodation to undertake your research, please contact us and we will work with you to meet your needs.
Privacy
The Carnegie Mellon University Libraries’ Digital Collections adhere to the University’s broader privacy notice. Information collected is used to enhance and improve our services.
Harmful Langauge Statement
Disclaimer Regarding Harmful and/or Offensive Language
The University Libraries recognizes that you may encounter materials in our collections containing harmful and/or offensive language both in historical records and the tools we create to describe them. Archival records are historical documents and therefore, they are unaltered to maintain their integrity and to foster accountability for the actions and views of the record’s creator. The language used by record creators and the materials they collected reflects the time and social context in which they were created.
The Descriptive Process
When describing the digital objects in these collections -- including historical publications and rare books -- we use “controlled vocabularies” maintained by external bodies. These controlled vocabularies and other traditional descriptive practices such as Library of Congress Subject Headings can be outdated, biased, and problematic, especially for marginalized peoples.
What are the University Libraries Doing to Remediate Outdated, Harmful, and Offensive Language?
The University Libraries is committed to the remediation of historical descriptive language and the work of critical cataloging. We are in the process of developing guidelines for remediating harmful descriptions and updating descriptions to include warnings for collections with sensitive materials. If you encounter language or content that you find offensive or harmful in a finding aid please contact us at archives@cmu.edu. We welcome your feedback.