Frequently Asked Questions

Every item in the JCB digital collections—Luna, Americana, and Social Media—is licensed under a Creative Commons license (CC BY 4.0). This means that you are free to:

Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.

As long as you give appropriate credit (we kindly ask you to use the following credit line: "Courtesy of the John Carter Brown Library") and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. 

No prior request is necessary, but the JCB would appreciate knowing about your publication or receiving complimentary copy of the published version of your work (see below).

In the world of libraries, the term "Americana" usually refers to collections that specialize in the history of the Americas. Before becoming known as "The John Carter Brown Library," the JCB was known as the "Bibliotheca Americana" of John Carter Brown. As a result, "Americana" was engraved on the limestone architrave above the front entrance of the library: it is in our birth certificate!

For us, Americana means all of the Americas: From the mountains of Tierra del Fuego to the shores of the Bering Sea, and the history of all the peoples who have lived here.

Our Collaboratory offers a way to collect digital objects together to tell a story and puts you in charge of it. These "projects" are yours to use as you wish, for research, collaboration, teaching, or inspiration. For step-by-step instructions, see our tutorial on creating a project.

Any project created through Americana is made public under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC 2.0) license. This means that anyone can use and share it for non-commercial purposes, as long as proper credit is given to the author (you). The authors of a project or exhibition retain copyright over their text, and are free to reuse, republish, and withdraw their project from Americana as they please.

We've poured significant effort into crafting an information architecture that allows you to establish a Project with items that possess a bibliographic record but have not yet been digitized. You can even annotate the placeholder image of non-digitized objects.

When the item eventually undergoes digitization, it will automatically link to your project. Furthermore, any annotations made to the placeholder image will automatically transition to the first page of the newly digitized item!

Adding non-digitized objects to your project also plays a crucial role in shaping the JCB's digitization priorities: adding non-digitized objects to your project essentially flags them for potential prioritization in our digitization queue, thereby influencing the direction of our digitization efforts.

The John Carter Brown Library is steadfast in its dedication to the enduring digital preservation of Americana projects. This ensures that, if ever a need arises for JCB to transition Americana to a different information architecture in the future, the projects highlighted by Americana will be accorded the same meticulous care as all other digital content curated by the JCB.

While the John Carter Brown Library and Americana strive for the highest degree of reliability, like all digital platforms, occasional technological hiccups, including unexpected downtime or data disruption, can occur. As a proactive measure, we recommend users keep personal backups, such as a list of items used and personal copies of descriptive texts, and employ good security practices. We aim to provide as seamless an access experience as possible, but there may be rare moments when uninterrupted access is challenged. We truly appreciate your understanding and assure you that your use of the library's resources is valued. Remember, our commitment is always to your service, and we navigate these digital landscapes together.

While we are in the process of crafting a comprehensive framework for inter-institutional collaborations, there's a multitude of avenues for your library, museum, or department to engage with Americana.

One potential collaboration could involve curating projects and exhibitions. This not only broadens curated access to the JCB collection but also contributes to a collective understanding of the capabilities and potential challenges inherent in our digital curation technology.

Americana eagerly anticipates your insights and feedback on our digital objects, metadata, projects, and digital tools. Our commitment to the progressive evolution of Americana has us continually envisioning the future landscape of digital collections.

Your thoughts on potential collaborations are invaluable to us. We're all ears and can't wait to hear from you, so please don't hesitate to reach out!

At present, there are three key ways in which individuals can contribute to the growth and development of Americana:

Firstly, consider making a donation to the John Carter Brown Library. Your generosity can aid in acquiring unique materials, support the continuous digitization of our vast collection, and fuel the ongoing enhancement of Americana, including the development of innovative tools.

Secondly, your creative contribution in the form of projects can carve new access routes into our collection, enriching our global user community. The interconnections you establish between items and your thoughtful annotations can refine our search functionality, leading other users to discover previously unnoticed materials.

Lastly, your feedback about Americana is highly valuable. Do you find our platform appealing? Have you identified an error? Or perhaps you've conjured up an idea for a novel tool we could develop? We welcome your insights and encourage you to share your thoughts with us.

Americana was primarily developed in Python, because of its flexibility, and uses Wagtail as its Content Management System.

Our books and maps are digitized, first using Scribe scanners from the Internet Archive, and later using in-house photography. For preservation, we store a copy of our digitized materials in Luna, which also functions as the backend for the images that you see in Americana—thanks to a strategic collaboration with Luna Imaging.

The JCB's bibliographic records are created in MARC and managed through Ex-Libris Alma.

Americana's digital images comply with IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) and our object viewer is built around Mirador, an open-source image viewing platform. Fabrique customized Mirador’s UI to conform to both the visual style and design principles of Americana.

At Americana, we deeply respect your privacy rights and recognize your ownership of the content you generate.

If you wish to delete your account, along with your projects and annotations, please reach out to us via the email associated with your account.

Please be mindful that upon deleting your account, all your personally created projects and annotations across all collaborated projects will be permanently removed. However, projects initiated by other users that you've participated in will remain intact. Your decision to delete your account impacts only the content you've directly contributed.