1. A Chicken or An Egg? Planning Your Digital Project
Presentation to the Saskatchewan Libraries Conference
Digitization 101 Pre-Conference Workshop
May 3, 2007 By
Carol Hixson
University Librarian
University of Regina

2. Why, What, Who, How, When
Why do you want to build a digital collection?
What do you have to digitize and how do you select what to digitize?
What are the challenges?
Who will be involved?
How do you plan?
How will you implement and manage?
How will you evaluate?
When will you be done?

3. Why Build Digital Collections?
Because everyone else is?
No!

4. Why Build Digital Collections?
To provide access to and awareness of materials

5. Provide access to and awareness of materials
Image copyrighted by University of Oregon Libraries

6. Provide access to and awareness of materials

7. Why Build Digital Collections?
To provide access to and awareness of materials
To broaden access to physically fragile materials

8. Broaden access to physically fragile materials
Image copyrighted by University of Oregon Libraries

9. Why Build Digital Collections?
To provide access to and awareness of materials
To broaden access to physically fragile materials
To preserve at-risk materials

10. Preserve at-risk materials
Image copyrighted by University of Oregon Libraries

11. Why Build Digital Collections?
To provide access to and awareness of materials
To broaden access to physically fragile materials
To preserve at-risk materials
To strengthen and build partnerships and collaborations with other cultural heritage institutions

12. Strengthen and build partnerships
Image copyrighted by University of Oregon Libraries

13. Strengthen and build partnerships
Image copyrighted by University of Oregon Libraries

14. Why Build Digital Collections?
To provide access to and awareness of materials
To broaden access to physically fragile materials
To preserve at-risk materials
To strengthen and build partnerships
To expand support for instructional programs

15. Image copyrighted by University of Oregon Libraries
Support instruction
Image copyrighted by University of Oregon Libraries

16. Why Build Digital Collections?
To provide access to and awareness of materials
To broaden access to physically fragile materials
To preserve some at risk materials
To strengthen and build partnerships
To expand support for instructional programs
To explore new delivery mechanisms for content

17. Explore new delivery mechanisms

18. Why Build Digital Collections?
To provide access to and awareness of materials
To broaden access to physically fragile materials
To preserve some at risk materials
To strengthen and build partnerships
To expand support for instructional programs
To explore new delivery mechanisms for content
To help shape the digital landscape

19. Help shape the digital landscape
Image copyrighted by University of Oregon Libraries

20. Why Build Digital Collections?
To provide access to and awareness of materials
To broaden access to physically fragile materials
To preserve some at risk materials
To strengthen and build partnerships
To expand support for instructional programs
To explore new delivery mechanisms for content
To help shape the digital landscape
To respond to user demand

21. Respond to user demand

22. What to Select
Digitization projects based on federally held collections and information holdings and supported by dedicated funding should:
support lifelong education and learning
reinforce a shared national consciousness and informed citizenship
be linked to economic growth and job creation

23. What to Select
Decisions to select materials for digitization should also be based on a business-like approach that:
identifies target user populations
understands the needs and expectations of the users
identifies measurable deliverables that will demonstrate benefits
includes a promotion/marketing plan
provides itemized costing
takes into account the work necessary for obtaining copyright clearance for the material to be digitized

24. What to Select
Meet your institution’s broad collection development criteria
Visual impact
Historical significance
Illustration of a particular theme
Meet needs of special user group

25. What to Select Copyright: The Place to Begin
Intellectual Nature of the Source Materials
Current and Potential Users
Actual and Anticipated Nature of Use
Format and Nature of the Digital Product
Describing, Delivering, and Retaining the Digital Product
Relationships to Other Digital Efforts
Costs and Benefits

26. http://www.dpconline.org/docs/ handbook/DecTree.pdf

27. What Are the Challenges?
Public interface – Web design

28. Public Interface: Browsable Subject Lists for the Collections

29. Public Interface: Drop-down Navigation Bars at Top

30. What Are the Challenges?
Public interface – Web design
Context for collections

31. Context for collections

32. What Are the Challenges?
Public interface – Web design
Context for collections
Building multiple collections simultaneously

33. Building multiple collections simultaneously

34. What Are the Challenges?
Public interface – Web design
Context for collections
Building multiple collections simultaneously
Technical issues

35. Technical issues Technical expertise Hardware and software
Metadata support
Interoperability
User interface
Digital preservation

36. Technical expertise Knowledge of operating systems and servers
Knowledge of database structure
Ability to troubleshoot
Knowledge of standards

37. Hardware and software Open source Purchased or licensed
Locally mounted or hosted externally
Adequate space and infrastructure
Robust backup mechanisms

38. Software requirements
Accept variety of digital formats
Allow for submission of digital objects, item-by-item or batch loading
Customizable user interface
Modular
Flexible system administration
Granular authorizations

39. Software requirements
Underlying mapping to standards-based metadata
Support controlled vocabularies
Flexible metadata capture, edit, and display
Global change capabilities
Statistics and reports

40. Digital preservation
Digital preservation is essentially about preserving access over time. This makes it virtually impossible neatly to segregate costs which are only for digital preservation from costs which are only about access

41. Digital preservation
Ensuring the long-term maintenance of a bitstream (the zeros and ones):
backing up files and keeping a copy at an offsite location
running checks to track the deterioration of storage media, files or bitstreams

42. Digital preservation
Providing continued accessibility of the contents:
viability
renderability
understandability

43. Digital preservation strategies
Bitstream copying
Refreshing
Durable/persistent media
Analog backups
Digital archaeology
Migration
Emulation

44. Digital preservation components
Metadata registry
Format registry
Checksum verification
Backup procedures
Persistent identifiers

45. What Are the Challenges?
Public interface – Web design
Context for collections
Building multiple collections simultaneously
Technical issues
Costs

46. Can you afford it? Will you absorb the work? Can you hire new people?
Will you use volunteers?
Do you have the needed hardware and software to support it?
Licenses and certificates
Registration with other services
Attending meetings and conferences

47. What Are the Challenges?
Public interface – Web design
Context for collections
Building multiple collections simultaneously
Technical issues
Costs
Copyright

48. What Are the Challenges?
Public interface – Web design
Context for collections
Building multiple collections simultaneously
Technical issues
Costs
Copyright
Training staff

49. Who Will Be Involved? Library staff? Computing center staff?
Faculty? Students? Target audience?
Campus or community partners?
Sister institutions?
Professional marketers?
Commercial vendors?

50. Staffing roles Coordinator with overall responsibility
Web site designers
Group to make policy decisions
Staff to handle or review submissions
Staff to set up and maintain the system and resolve technical issues
Group or individuals to make contacts and market the collections
Staff for subsidiary services

51. How to Plan? Develop a business plan Develop a project plan
Document decisions
Make your decisions reversible

52. Business plan elements
Mission, Vision, Values, Goals
Executive summary
Product or service description
Needs assessment or market research
Environment and competition
Markets and services
Organizational structure

53. Business plan elements
Financial plans
Product evaluation and usability assessment
Drawn from:
Business Planning for Cultural Heritage Institutions
Liz Bishoff and Nancy Allen
Council on Library and Information Resources, 2004

54. Project plan issues Why are you doing it? Who is your target audience?
Who will do the work?
What do you have to digitize and how will you select?
What standards will you follow?
What software and hardware will you use?
How will you preserve the collection?
How will you pay for it?
How will you manage the project?
How will you evaluate the project?

55. Project Implementation http://libweb. uoregon

56. Project Implementation

57. Project Management Web pages Archived discussion lists
Project management software
Folders, spreadsheets, etc.
Overlapping responsibilities

58. Project Evaluation Focus groups Web forms Formal surveys
Use statistics
Outside consultants

59. Evaluation: Interactive Comment Form

60. When Will You Be Done? When you run out of money
When you run out of materials to digitize
When your users lose interest
When you run out of time
Never

63. Image copyrighted by University of Oregon Libraries

69. Contact Information
Carol Hixson
University Librarian
Dr. John Archer Library
University of Regina
3737 Wascana Parkway
Regina, SK S4S 0A2
Phone: (306)
Fax: (306)