Constructing the Memories Creating a Digital Collection Linda J. White, Digital Project Coordinator

Constructing the Memories Creating a digital collection is more than just putting something online. It requires planning, funding and a lot of work.

Things to Consider  Audience  Selection  Funding  Institutional and Collegial Support  Timeline

Selection Policy and Process

 Things to consider  Copyright and Privacy Issues  Physical Condition  Availability of cataloging information  Cost of digitization  Time required to digitize  Technology needed  Support for other institutional activities  Audience for the collections

Developing Your Work Plan

 Should you do an entire collection or just a selection of the collection?  Computer storage space  Staff  Money  Time  Framing material

Developing Your Work Plan  Entire collection vs. selections  Collection condition  Collection Organization  Providing Access to the collections

Developing Your Work Plan  What is the current organization of the collection  Has the collection been cataloged?  What access aids (such as finding aids) are available?  Who will create metadata and database for the collection?

Developing Your Work Plan  How do you provide access to the collections?  Search engines?  Collection Naming schemes?

Digitizing the Collections  Who does the digital capture?  Do you do the work in-house?  What scanning equipment do you need to obtain?  Do you have staff that can do the work?  Do you have to hire new staff?  Can you train existing staff?  Where do you put your set up?

Digitizing the Collections  Who does the digital capture?  Selecting an outside vendor  Will they be on or off site?  Will need to develop RFP’s and contract standards.  How to insure quality.  How to insure the safety of materials to be digitized.

Digitizing the Collections  Whether you work in-house or not  Color, black and white or greyscale  Unique formats  Scanning Equipment  Targets and instructions  Text capture  Back-ups and storage of images  What kind of products you want

Digitizing the Collections

 Quality Review  Did you get everything you were supposed to?  Did you get what you want?

Presentation

 Framework Documents  What kind of contextual information should be available for users?  What other kinds of information is already available that can be used?

Presentation  Determine how the collection should behave and how things should link together  Search Engine  Page Turners  Thumbnail images  Plug-ins to be used

Presentation  Copyright Issues  If institution does not hold copyright or item is not in public domain must get permission to use.  Must also deal with privacy issues  How to inform the users

Presentation  Final Steps  Final Quality Review  Editing for Style and Content  Look for broken links  Final testing on non-public area of server  Release to Public  Publicity Issues

The Collection is Up. Patrons love it. But the work is not done….

Maintenance  Fixing broken links  Updating online materials  Archiving online collections  Other Allied Products  Reference Issues

Articles and Papers  For more information: