Getting Started with Digital Projects

It is critical that before you embark on a digital project, you take the time to comprehensively asses your purposes, your audience, the collections to be digitized and what opportunities this project offers.  By answering these questions it will help create a digitization project that completely meets institutional needs and fits within your budget and capabilities.

Below is a list of questions to consider when designing any digitization project. Also, refer to BCR’s CDP Best Practice documents for further information about digitization practices and guidelines.

Purpose

For what purpose do you want to use the digitized materials and what are the benefits of having this collection in digital form?

Is there a demand for the content of these materials in digital form?

What are the goals of your project/what do you hope to accomplish?

Is the main goal increased access or decreased handling of fragile originals (preservation)? Or both?

Will the digital images replace or supplement existing originals?

Will the digitized materials complement existing collections in online or print form, or might they fill a lack of digitized materials in a certain unique subject or topical area?
See Hazen, Dan, Jeffrey Horrell, and Jan Merrill-Oldham's Selecting Research Collections for Digitization.

Audience

Who is your intended audience? This will determine the parameters of the project at all stages of digitization.

What are the needs of your users and how can you best serve them? This question may apply to modes of access, what search features and Web interfaces will be most helpful to your users, what types of browsing might be appropriate, how users intend to use the information, scanning practices appropriate to intended use of the materials, etc.

See Market Segments and Their Information Needs

Physical Characteristics of the Collection

What is the physical condition of the materials? How do the originals need to be handled during scanning to prevent further deterioration?

What is the format of the collection (negatives, black and white, color, text and graphics, etc.)?

What size are the materials? Do you have the capability to scan oversize materials? What is the quality of the originals? This will determine what resolution you will scan at (a general rule of thumb is to scan at the highest resolution appropriate to the quality of the object you are scanning), as well as file size and storage considerations. In what format/how will the digitized images be stored (on CDs or tape)? If you intend to store images online, do you have appropriate server space?

Ownership/Copyrights

Who owns the materials?

Are they in the public domain? If not, can permissions be secured?
See CDP Legal Resources

Timeframe

This is an important consideration, especially for grant-funded projects. As a rule, everything usually takes longer than you plan for. It is helpful to break the project schedule down into proposed durations, with milestones and expected completion dates.

Funding

Have you secured a funding source for this project?

Have you considered local, state, national, philanthropic and collaborative sources?

What parts of the project will funding support? (Physical resources, hardware, software, networked access, personnel, dedicated space, vendor services, etc.)

What about plans for maintaining access into the future (ongoing costs)? Is there a long-term institutional commitment to this project?

Staff Allocation

What areas and levels of staff expertise are available to you?

Who will be responsible for selection and physical evaluation of the materials?

Who will be responsible for preparation of materials prior to scanning?

Who will be responsible for image capture, quality control and post-scanning manipulation of images (if any)?

Who will be responsible for indexing and cataloging of image records?

Who will determine the best way to make the images accessible to users?

Digitization

Where will the digitizing take place — in a central location or off-site?

If off-site, does the vendor have adequate, safe storage facilities?

What is the level of image quality (resolution) you hope to obtain (according to user needs and the quality of originals you are digitizing)?

Will you perform any manipulation of the images post-scanning (faithful reproduction vs. image optimized for presentation)?

What is your criteria for an acceptable image when performing quality control?

How will you store copies of the digitized images? Are there particular image guidelines specified by your funding source that you must adhere to?

Will you create an archival image as well as derivative files for viewing and downloading?

What are the limitations of your hardware and software (file size, file format standards, proprietary file formats, interoperability, scanner limitations, etc.)?

Metadata Scheme

What type of description already exists for the collection and at what level (item level, collection level...)?

What metadata or finding aid scheme do you plan to use (Dublin Core, MARC, VRA, EAD, etc.)?

If there are several versions of an original, which version will you catalog?

Access

Will the images be linked to existing bibliographic systems or will it be necessary to develop a new access method for the images?

At what level will this access be provided — item or collection level or both?

Will the images be accessible and deliverable via a central or distributed site?

Will you provide a search mechanism?

How will users be able to search the collection?

Will your audience be local or global?

Will access be restricted or password protected?

How will you distribute your collection — over the Web, at dedicated CD-ROM stations, by interactive media device, etc.?
Thomas Fry and Keith Lance A Comparison of Web-Based Library Catalogs and Museum Exhibits and Their Impacts on Actual Visits: A Focus Group Evaluation for the Colorado Digitization Program

Maintenance

How do you plan to store archival images and where?

What kind of a backup mechanism do you have in place in case of hardware/software failure?

What plans have you considered for data migration and refreshment?

What level of long-term institutional commitment have you secured for your project?

Do you have funding resources secured for maintenance of the digitized collection into the future? See CDP Digital Preservation Resources