HCAC Digital Archive Navigation Guide
The HCAC Digital Archive offers multiple ways to explore the histories, collections, and stories shared by participating HBCU partners. Visitors can browse by institution, theme, material type, or curated interpretation, or search across the entire archive using keyword and advanced search tools.
Each path below supports a different way of engaging with the archive—whether you want to learn more about a specific HBCU, follow a shared theme across institutions, explore particular types of materials, or dive into curated stories and highlights.
Explore by Member (HBCU Partners)
Explore by Member allows you to browse collections contributed by individual HBCU partners. Each member page highlights that institution’s participation in the HCAC project and provides access to item sets created from their collections.
What to expect
- Item sets created by a specific HBCU partner
- Materials selected and described by the contributing institution
- A way to explore collections at an institutional level
Explore by Theme (Featured Collections)
Explore by Theme brings together items from all participating institutions around shared topics and experiences. The HCAC Digital Archive includes six Featured Collections:
- HBCU Campus Life
- HBCU Academics
- HBCU Art
- HBCU Activism
- HBCU Collective Joy
- HBCU Community Connections
Four themes—Campus Life, Academics, Art, and Activism—align with themes from the At the Vanguard exhibition. The remaining themes emerged through analysis of materials across the archive.
What to expect
- Cross-institutional collections organized by theme
- Up to ten items contributed by each HBCU per theme
- A way to compare shared experiences and histories across campuses
Explore by Type
Explore by Type allows you to browse the archive based on the kind of historical material you are interested in.
All items in the HCAC Digital Archive are categorized into three broad type categories: Written Works, Art, and Ephemera & Objects.
Once the page opens, you will see a gallery view. You can change how items are sorted using the sorting options on the page.
The Advanced Search page offers another way to search by media. Instead of these broad categories, you will find more nuanced media types. The lists below show how the broad type categories relate to more specific media formats.
What to expect
- Photographs, documents, artworks, audiovisual materials, and other object types
- Groupings by format rather than institution or theme
- Useful entry points for teaching and research
Broad Type Categories (What They Mean)
- Ephemera & Objects: “Materials, usually printed documents, created for a specific, limited purpose, and generally designed to be discarded after use,” but have often become collectibles (SAA). For the HCAC project, we expand the definition of ephemera to include objects and use this as a catch-all category for materials that do not fit well into the other two categories.
- Written Works: Both published and unpublished items in which text is the primary mode of communication.
- Art: Intentional expressions of creativity.
How Broad Types Relate to More Specific Media
Ephemera & Objects
- Photograph
- Audio
- Map
- Three-Dimensional Object
- Object
- Video
Written Works
- Letters and correspondence
- Diaries and journals
- Meeting minutes and reports
- Lecture notes and course materials
- Student essays and theses
- Speeches and addresses
- Manuscripts and draft writings
- Newsletters, pamphlets, and text-based publications
Art
- Painting
- Photograph
- Sculpture
- Three-Dimensional Object
- Murals
- Drawing
- Decorative arts
Curated Collection Highlights
Curated Collection Highlights feature selections from individual HBCU partners’ collections.
What to expect
- Institution-specific curated selections
- Short, focused groupings of items
- Narratives written by the contributing HBCU
Collection Stories
Collection Stories are interpretive essays and narrative exhibits built from materials in the HCAC Digital Archive.
What to expect
- Thematic, narrative-driven digital stories
- Interpretation connecting multiple items and collections
- Public-facing essays by project collaborators
Browse All Collections and Items
Use All Items to view all individual records across the archive, regardless of category.
Search and Advanced Search
- Search Icon 🔍 — keyword searching across general content pages such as events calendar, general information, and learning resources.
- Advanced Search link option for searching the historical archive — filtering by title, subject, creator, date, institution, and other metadata
Advanced Search
The Advanced Search page is the main way to explore and search the digital archive. You can browse the collection by selecting one or more categories listed on the left side of the page.
You may choose multiple options within a single category or across different categories. Keep in mind that some combinations may return no results.
The first category, Full Text Search, looks through an item's descriptive information (metadata). This includes:
- The creator of the item
- The time period when it was created
- Subjects and topics related to the item
- Item type
- Contributing institution
- Collection name
Search Tips and Limitations
- Single-word searches work best. Searches with two or more words may return unexpected or unrelated results.
- If you use multiple words, placing them in quotation marks (for example,
"civil rights") can help narrow results. However, this may exclude items that contain quotation marks in their titles. - Boolean operators such as AND and NOT are not supported. While OR may return results, they may not be accurate.
- Proximity searches are not supported.
- Wildcard searches using an asterisk (*) to find variations of a word do not work.
Using these tips can help you get the most accurate results when searching the archive.
Exploring Connections Between Items
- Relation — links to related items or collections
- Reference — links to external resources
- Source — original collection or repository information
Media Types and Viewing Files
Media File Formats
The HCAC Digital Archive includes a range of media formats to represent its diverse collections. These formats are designed to be easy to view and explore online.
- Images (JPEG): Photographs and other visual materials that can be viewed directly in your web browser.
- PDFs: Single- or multi-page documents that can be searched when opened in the expanded view. Search accuracy and availability may vary, especially for handwritten materials.
- 3D Objects: Interactive three-dimensional models embedded through Sketchfab that you can rotate and explore.
- Audiovisual Content: Audio and video materials, including oral histories, are presented using the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS). OHMS allows you to search transcripts and jump to specific moments within recordings.
Viewing Media Files
Single media items
Click the main image thumbnail to open the item in an expanded view.
Multiple media items
Some items include more than one media file. These appear as thumbnails with titles in the Media section on the left side of the item page.
- Click the main image (the first thumbnail) to open it directly in the expanded view.
- Click any additional thumbnail or title to go to that media file’s individual page, where you can then open it in the expanded view.
Searching PDFs
PDFs can be searched within the expanded view. Please note that search results may be incomplete, particularly for documents that contain handwritten text.
Media-Specific Metadata
Some media files include their own detailed descriptions and information specific to that file.
You can access this media-specific metadata in two ways:
- Click the media file title in the Media section on the left side of the page. Titles are written as descriptive sentences rather than file names or identifiers.
- Use the Linked Resources section in the right-hand corner of the page and filter by media type.