Collection Spotlight: Coherent Digital Collections
By Rebecca Johnston, Social Sciences and Humanities Librarian
Coherent Digital specializes in finding and preserving endangered materials and making them accessible. Recently, the company invited librarians, researchers and the wider community to submit endangered reports, datasets, podcasts, and other content in urgent need of preservation.
SU Libraries provides access to five of Coherent’s ‘Commons’: Africa Commons, History Commons, Latin America Commons, Policy Commons and South Asia Commons. Combined, these collections represent millions of items from around the world and across centuries.
Africa Commons contains a variety of materials from across the continent of Africa, such as South African magazines designed for Black African audiences, magazines, newspapers and films from East Africa, over a century of South African films and documentaries, and West African magazines.
Latin America Commons includes books, magazines, photographs, maps, letters, diaries, ephemera, videos and audio files from centuries of Latin American and Latinx culture.
The History Commons includes several significant historical newspaper and magazine collections, like African American Newspapers in the South and Women’s Magazine and Newspapers, as well as government documents (see Secret Files from World Wars to Cold War). The History Commons also contains specific modules, including LGBTQ+ Social Justice and Culture.
Policy Commons contains the Global Think Tanks collection, which is the world’s largest database for public policy, including reports, working papers, policy briefs, data sources and media from Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs), Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and research centers.
South Asia Commons contains materials from the South Asia Archive, a collection of 4.5 million pages of documents, ranging from 1700 to 1953, collected by the South Asian Research Foundation.
Some of these materials were digitized for the first time by Coherent. Each of the Commons also includes online resources to help digitize, disseminate, preserve and discover materials.
Search Tips:
When using any of the Commons, you can set up a personal account and use it to save your searches and set up email alerts. One of the most highly recommended search strategies for this platform is also one of the most common: using Boolean search terms, including AND, OR and NOT (make sure to capitalize them), to connect search terms. You can also use tools like the advanced search string builder to create more precise search and facets to refine your results (by year, organization, content and publication type). One of the special features of this platform is the ability to search within an organization or organizations. You can find additional search tips from Coherent Digital.
To provide feedback or suggest a title to add to the collection, please complete the Resource Feedback Form.