Calisphere is a free, easy-to-navigate portal that offers educators, students and the public access to more than 150,000 images, documents and other primary source materials both from the libraries and museums of the UC campuses and from cultural heritage organizations across California.

“Calisphere delivers a treasure trove of exciting primary sources directly to the desktop of students, teachers and the interested general public...” Calisphere’s primary sources include photographs, documents, newspapers, political cartoons, works of art, diaries, transcribed oral histories, advertising, and other cultural artifacts that reveal the diverse history and culture of California and its role in national and world history.

“Calisphere delivers a treasure trove of exciting primary sources directly to the desktop of students, teachers and the interested general public in remarkably informative and innovative ways,” said Steve MacLeod, Public Services Coordinator in the Libraries’ Department of Special Collections & Archives.

Calisphere also provides a single point of access for more than 300 UC-created web sites and collections. The UC sites cover a wide range of topics and provide access to thousands of additional primary sources. It has a special emphasis on serving California K-12 teachers and librarians, as well as the community at large. Calisphere is also used by UCI faculty and staff interested in exposing UCI undergraduates to primary sources.

The Website’s special features include: Themed collections organized into historical eras, from the Gold Rush to the 1970s; California Cultures, which provides access to more than 15,000 selected images from UC collections documenting ethnic communities in California and the West; and Japanese-American Relocation Digital Archives (JARDA) that includes more than 10,000 governmental and personal resources that illustrate the story of Japanese-American internment during World War II.

For more information on Calisphere, please contact Steve Macleod at 949.824.4967 or at smacleod@uci.edu.