The SILS Digital Project Repository was originally developed by SILS students Matthew Bachtell and Ying Zhang for Dr. Gary Marchionini’s Digital Libraries course. The “Pathfinder Digital Library”, as it was then called, housed two archived pathfinders and provided organized lists of externally linked pathfinders.

The project was later taken over by Becca Cahill, Adam Webb, and Kristen Wilson, who renamed it the SILS Digital Project Repository (DPR) and expanded its scope to include portals, digital archives, and other HTML format projects. These students archived about sixty pathfinders and other projects during their administration of the site in hopes of preserving projects housed on impermanent student webspace. Approximately sixty off-site projects were linked from the DPR as well. An archived version of the DPR as it existed at this time is available here.

In the Spring of 2006 the DPR was adopted by Lori Eakin, Emily Riley, and Ellen Whisler. The new administration team has worked to collect detailed metadata for projects housed on-site and off-site in preparation for future development of the DPR. We have also tried to improve navigability of the site, implemented a sleek redesign, and continued to solicit new project submissions from SILS students. In addition, we have made every effort to contact past project creators to get permission to migrate projects from student space to DPR space. Unfortunately, most e-mails of this nature have bounced, and once UNC student e-mail addresses begin to disappear student webspace is sure to follow. This is a pressing concern, as an unfortunate number of off-site linked projects have already disappeared. If you currently have an off-site project linked from the DPR site and would like to grant us permission to archive it, please contact us as soon as possible.

SILS students interested in having new work archived should go here for DPR submission guidelines. We are always accepting new submissions!

For a detailed explanation of our Creative Commons license, go here.

For any further information, please feel free to contact us by e-mail.