Skip to Main Content

CWRU's Digital Collections

Everything you need to know about CWRU's digital collections repository, Digital Case.

Get Online Help

Reminder: Online Access

  • Library resources require going through CWRU Single Sign-On.
  • The best method is to follow links from the library website.
  • When logged in and a browser window is not closed, access should continue from resource to resource.
  • Remember to close your browser when done.

Navigating Collections

Digital Case does currently house scholarly publications of CWRU faculty, staff, and students, but these collections are currently being moved to Scholarly Commons@CWRU! If you have any questions regarding the scholarly collections, contact digitalcommons@case.edu or click here to submit research!

Searching Tips

Digital Case contains digitized Special Collections and Archival materials in a variety of subject areas. There are a few ways you can search for these sources.

  1. Basic Search
  2. Advanced Search
  3. Browsing
  4. Contextual Links

Check out "Ways to Search Digital Case" below to learn more about these search tactics!

Ways to Search Digital Case

Main Search Bar

Main Search Bar

You can search the digital collections through the main search bar seen on the Homepage or in the upper right-hand corner of all pages.

Advanced Search Bar in Digital Case

Advanced Search in Digital Case

You can also use the "Advanced Search" in Digital Case, which allows you to filter the search by title, date, subject, author, or Dublin Core identifier (DC Identifier). You can also narrow your search based on collection if you know what collection you are looking for!

Collections Page for Browsing

Browsing for Digital Collections

By browsing for collections, you can see the many diverse digital collections in Digital Case. Click "Collections" on the main page and scroll through to find materials. If you want to know more about how collections are organized in Digital Case, click here!

Contextual Links in Digital Case

Contextual Links in Digital Case

Some of the descriptions below the digital materials contain links that can be used to find materials! These links are called "contextual links" and can help users find specific types of sources. For example, you may only want materials from 1927-1928, so clicking "1927-1928" under the object will take you to objects within that date range. 

Research Data in Digital Case

Student Yearbooks

CWRU Yearbooks as Data

Ever wanted to extract text from yearbooks to see how language, culture, or society has changed over time? Or do you have another unique research question that needs large sets of textual data? Look no further than CWRU Archives Yearbook Collection!

CWRU Patents

Data within CWRU Patents

Did you know that Digital Case has 255 CWRU Patents that could serve as a resource for business, law, and other subject area's research? Check it out!

Cleveland Bystander

Newspapers and Periodicals as a Dataset

Digital Case contains many different newspapers and periodicals, like the Cleveland Bystander, that can serve as both qualitative and quantitative datasets. Additionally, textual materials that are made accessible on Digital Case contain optical character recognition (OCR) files that are readily available to download under the digital objects!

Cleveland, Ohio and the Western Reserve Digital Text Collection

The Data Hidden within Digitized Books

An underrated source for datasets are digital books. Digital Case has a collection of digitized books from Kelvin Smith Library's Special Collections that focus on the history, government, culture, and people of Cleveland, Ohio. These are great sources for data mining, textual analysis, and other research methods!

Want more ideas?

Want More Ideas on How Digital Case can Serve as a Resource for Data?

Contact the Digital Collections Manager!

Unique Ways to Use Digital Collections

Other Primary Sources

Not seeing everything you need?

If you are looking for more assistance in using Digital Case for your research, Contact our Digital Collections Librarian at cxg570@case.edu!