The Digital Prairie is a comprehensive digital repository that provides access to various collections and research tools, making it a valuable resource for both casual readers and researchers.
State Collections
Oklahoma Digital Prairie provides visitors unique digital content spanning more than 100 years of rich, vibrant history from the 46th State. The resource areas found here include documents, photographs, newspapers, reports, pamphlets, posters, maps and audio/visual content. Content ranges from the late 1800s to the present day. Some collections are solely attributed to the work of librarians, archivists and content managers at the Oklahoma Department of Libraries. Others, such as the collections providing citizens access to digitized state government publications are joint projects between ODL and Oklahoma state government agencies contributing publications and documents.
The historical content is mainly obtained from digitizing materials in the archives and documents divisions of the Department of Libraries. Careful consideration has gone into the selection of each and every item for these collections. The criteria for selection were particularly focused on a) materials difficult to access due to their rarity, b) materials with broad interdisciplinary application, and c) materials that are at a risk from a preservation viewpoint.
ODL provides Oklahoma's citizens access to archived material on state government websites, publications, and other digitally preserved content through the Archive-It service.
Viewing Tools
The Digital Prairie Collections utilize the CONTENTdm digital collection management software to organize and present content. CONTENTdm allows for the virtual recreation of hierarchical materials online, making it possible to read through a book or a series of letters on screen as you would with the physical copy in hand. Another key feature of CONTENTdm's Document Viewer is its ability to display page images and full-text transcripts side by side; this vastly simplifies the process of reading 19th-century penmanship while still allowing the reader to appreciate the style and format of the original writing. Full-text searching capabilities of materials with accompanying transcripts is provided. CONTENTdm has been optimized for use in all major browsers.