Digitising Collections: Getting Started, Getting Funding, Getting Collections Online

Cokie Anderson, Assistant ProfessorOklahoma State Universitycokie@okstate.edu

Deciding to Digitise

Digitisation is an expensive process, and materials to be digitised must be carefully chosen. Consider:

Condition of the materialsDemand for the materialsUniqueness of the materials

The Starting Point:A Digitisation Policy

Formulate a written digitisation policy, like that used for developing your print collection. Develop a checklist or questionnaire based on the policy for use in evaluating materials to be digitised and for guiding you through the digitisation process.

Issues a policy should address

AccessPreservationAudiencePhysical condition of materialsOwnershipProject support (Money!)

Sample Digitisation PolicyNational Library of Australia http://www.nla.gov.au/policy/digitisation.html

Getting Started….

EquipmentComputer: Get as much hard drive space, memory, and speed as you can afford. A large monitor is helpful. This should be the most expensive item.Scanner: Basic desktop scanner works well. No need to spend a lot of money here. Make sure it will do grayscale and will save files in TIFF format.

Getting started…

SoftwareScanning: use software that came with your scanner.Optical Character Recognition: OCR software should be the best you can afford. Spend your money here, and save time in the long run.XML editor: You can buy special editors (e.g. XML Spy) but shareware/freeware text editors work well (We use Note Tab).

Getting started…

StaffingProject Director: develops proposal and evaluation for the project, conducts all planning and provides estimates of costs.

Operations Manager: develops workflow, establishes standards, prepares materials, establishes quality controls, supervises staff and vendor relations.

Project Participants: actually perform the hands-on digitization.

Getting funding

GrantsGovernment AgenciesFoundationsCorporations

Cooperative effortsConsortia“Contract” work

Ongoing institutional support essential

Getting collections online

Form an alliance with your systems department – you’ll need their help.Web server – make sure you have access.Promote your site – register with search engines, send out press releases.Keep statistics – put a counter on your site (Webcounter).

Digitisation Process – Part 1

Digitisation Process – Part 2

Digitisation Resources

AHDS: http://ahds.ac.uk Oxford Text Archive: http://ota.ahds.ac.uk http://ota.ahds.ac.uk/documents/creating/ University of Virginia E-text Center: http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/standard.html

Digitisation Resources

Cornell University Digitisation Tutorial: http://www.library.cornell.edu/preservation/tutorial/contents.html Colorado Digitization Project: http://coloradodigital.coalliance.org/standard.html Text Encoding Initiative: http://www.tei-c.org/

Digitisation Training - UK

Oxford Humanities Computing Unit Summer Seminars

http://www.hcu.ox.ac.uk/summer/index.html

University of GlasgowDigitisation Summer School

• http://www.hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk/DigiSS02/index.htm

M. Phil. in Digital Management & Preservation

University College LondonMA in Electronic Communication & Publishing

Digitisation Training – North America

University of Virginia Rare Book School-http://www.virginia.edu/oldbooks/rbs/schedule.html MA in Digital Humanities- http://www.virginia.edu/mediastudies/

University of New Brunswick Summer Institute on Electronic Texts

http://www.lib.unb.ca/Texts/SGML_course/Aug2001/

Professional Organisations

Association for Computing & the Humanities

http://www.ach.org Tübingen, Germany 24-28 July 2002

Association for Computing Machineryhttp://www.acm.org

American Society for Information Science & Technology

http://www.asis.org Philadelphia, PA 18-21 November 2002

Conferences

Internet Librarian InternationalGraphic Communications Association

http://www.gca.org XML EuropeExtreme Mark-up Languages – MontréalXML Asia/PacificXML 2002 - US