Virtual Cities Terms of use
Information for Donors
Collection scope
The Virtual Cities Project collects all original and digital documents related urban history and the urban experience in East Asian societies, especially China and Vietnam. The Virtual Cities Project preserves these material in a state-of-the-art library located on the campus of the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon (France) or for all digital materials on the servers of the Adonis-TGE (French National Large-scale Infrastructure for Research).
Materials we will accept
The Virtual Cities Project accepts donations from a single item to many boxes of documents. Donations do not have to be organized, and do not have to pertain to a specific person, event, or organization. We accept all forms of original material, including papers, books, films, audiotapes, photographs, slides, negatives, artifacts, and maps. Material that is donated to the Virtual Cities Project does not circulate. This ensures that the materials can be preserved for future generations. All materials are digitized. They are published online for education and research with the consent of the donors.
Contact the Virtual Cities Project
If you are interested in donating items to the Virtual Cities Project, please contact us through our respective email addresses for each Virtual City (see web platform). If you have a large number of items to donate, please contact us to make arrangements concerning delivery of the materials to the Institut d’Asie Orientale. When we receive the material, they will be inventoried and you will receive a letter and deed of gift.
A Guide to Deeds of Gift (Society of American Archivists publication)
What will happen to my documents?
After receiving a signed deed of gift, our staff will then process the materials. This includes housing the materials in acid-free sleeves, folders, and boxes, as well as any necessary conservation work required to extend the life of the material. After the collection is processed, a finding aid will be created if the size of the collection makes it relevant. The finding aid is used to help researchers find information that may be located within your materials. The materials will then be housed in a climate-controlled environment designed to extend the life of the materials.
With a donor's permission, all non-copyright items will be scanned and added to the Virtual Cities Project. Access to the Virtual Archive is free and allows anyone with Internet access to search and view material in the Virtual Cities Project.
Additionally, upon a donor's request, after the items are scanned, we will burn the digital copies onto a DVD or CD Rom and send this to you free of charge.
Where are my documents?
If you have already donated materials to the Virtual Cities Project and accepted to make your name public on our web platforms, please check the Biography section. All relevant materials related to a given donor will appear listed under the donor’s name.
Note: We are greatly indebted to The Vietnam Center and Archive for their donation guidelines which inspired our own Donation page.
Last update on Wednesday 11 April 2012 (22:23) by C. Henriot