Digital Commons Exhibits: A Flexible Showcase for Your Collections

DCX overview

Digital Commons Exhibits (DCX) is a solution designed to present your institution’s best works in a flexible, attractive way.

Charles Lewis French Aviation Postcards

Integrated with Digital Commons repositories, DCX provides:

• Streamlined workflows to quickly and easily create eye-catching exhibits from your Digital Commons repository content.
• Curation tools to highlight the best and most important scholarship your institution has to offer.
• A modern, museum-like design that effectively communicates the prestige and reputation of your institution.
• Flexible narrative options and third-party embeds to bring archives and special collections to life.
• A visually inviting gateway to research projects to attract students and faculty.

Each Digital Commons license has access to 10 free exhibits, which can be used to curate items from any publication in your Digital Commons repository to create modern showcases of your unique content.

What types of exhibits can I create?

All kinds! Try it out for special collections, archives, library exhibits, art shows, student works, research collections, teaching and learning materials, journals, or conferences.

DCX is also great for digital humanities projects, labs, grant-funded research artifacts, data collections, or any other collection of content where you’d like to showcase multiple file types together in a visually appealing display.

How does it work?

Digital Commons Exhibits is integrated with your Digital Commons repository, allowing you to quickly and easily import items from any publication in your repository into an easy-to-edit exhibit. No need to upload files or enter metadata twice, and download counts stay unified.

Each exhibit is customizable and can include a variety of file types curated from different publications to create exhibits around themes, projects, events, or special collections. Create a narrative flow through custom ordering of items and addition of text at exhibit, section, and item levels.

What features does it include?

• Responsive design
• Easy customization of landing, exhibit, and item pages
• Direct import of records from DC collections
• Handles all file types
• PDF viewers
• Image pan/zoom
• Ability to add sections within exhibits
• Mixing of file types within exhibits and sections
• Compound object display
• Embedded content support for many external sources
• Search snippets and thumbnails
• Faceted search
• Downloading of files from original DC record
• Custom background color, font, and font color options
• Custom ordering of items
• Custom thumbnails
• Custom metadata
• Targets the WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility standard

After a quick, one-time setup of your institution’s DCX site, you will be able to create exhibits and import content from publications in your Digital Commons repository.

How to get started

Contact your consultant at dc-support@bepress.com to start using Digital Commons Exhibits. Your consultant will perform a one-time setup and provide you with a login to your institution’s DCX site.

Once you are all set up, download the Digital Commons Exhibits User Guide (PDF) and start creating exhibits, importing content, and fine-tuning your site’s display.

A training video is also available in two parts: Part 1 introduces the features of DCX and looks at live examples. Part 2 provides a tour of the administrative interface.

Please let your consultant know at dc-support@bepress.com if you have any questions!