Spotlight digital exhibits

Create a Spotlight exhibit

Spotlight at Stanford is an application for showcasing digital content in easy-to-produce exhibits. Spotlight at Stanford users can quickly build their own online exhibits featuring digital content stored within and outside of the SDR (Stanford Digital Repository), without having to develop their own project interface or use a proprietary system.

Spotlight homepage showing sample social justice digital exhibits.

Who can request an exhibit?

Spotlight at Stanford is available for use by the Stanford community and its partner organizations.

Learn more about creating a Spotlight at Stanford exhibit

What to expect 

Using a templated approach, Spotlight exhibits can be created to satisfy a wide variety of use cases. There are currently over 140 published exhibits. Check out How does Stanford use Spotlight? for an array of examples. 

Content in the SDR (Stanford Digital Repository), such as images, audio and video, searchable PDFs, and other files, are typically uploaded to an exhibit focused on a common theme. Digital content, whether from the SDR or an external source, can be grouped, searched, and displayed in various ways. Exhibit creators write accompanying text to build context and establish discourse around the digital content.

The Spotlight at Stanford team is available to consult, discuss your ideas, and help bring them to fruition with training for you and your exhibit-building colleagues.

Spotlight for Stanford faculty and researchers

Do you have digital research content you would like to showcase online? Maybe you are teaching a class at Stanford, and you would like a web publishing platform where your students can present a group research project that contains media or images, alongside explanatory text? Maybe your students have completed research reports highlighting a deep dive into content in the Stanford Digital Repository? Or perhaps you are a Stanford researcher or faculty member who would like to feature the results of your research in order to highlight various digital media or image assets alongside a narrative? Spotlight might be for you. 

The library provides consultation and training to the Stanford community for use of the Spotlight platform, which is well-suited to visual storytelling. Check out the examples below.

Selected exhibits by Stanford faculty

Arizona Garden

Go to the exhibit

Voortrekker Monumentality: a digital archive

Go to the exhibit

Antarctic Radar Film Digitization Project

Go to the exhibit

Questions about Spotlight at Stanford? 

In general, to leave feedback about a specific exhibit, please use the feedback link in the upper right corner on that exhibit page. Not sure if you are ready for an exhibit? Contact the Spotlight Service Team for a consultation.

If you are looking to set up an exhibit or request training please use the following links.