Planning for Digitization
My interest in archival work centers largely on the creation of digital archives. This interest stems from a desire to digitize rare materials in order to make them more accessible to users. As such, it feels remiss not to acknowledge the amazing work that is being done by the Digital Public Library of America. Their mission is to bring together the “riches of America’s libraries, archives, and museums, and make them freely available to the world.”
As a part of their effort to do so, and in partnership with Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, they have created a Self-Guided Curriculum that takes the user through developing a digital collection from the planning stage, accession, digitization, copyright, metadata, and marketing.
I ran into this curriculum through my work with the Wisconsin Historical Society. My project is to scan documents and photographs from women who participated in the suffragette movement in the early 20thcentury in Wisconsin, then I’ll create the metadata and push through CONTENTdm which will format it so it is ready to be put on the web, and finally create a web portal so this information is accessible to the public.
The first lesson in the course is Planning for Digitization. It walks the user through the thought process that needs to happen even before the selection of materials.
The second lesson in the course is Selecting Content for a Digitization Project. It discusses the kinds of materials from your collection you might select to digitize and offers reasons why you would select those materials.
The third lesson in the course covers Understanding Copyright. This is a complex and vital area to cover when planning for digitization. It is important to know not only if the project can digitize the material, but also how users can use the materials once the project goes live.
The fourth lesson in the course covers Using Metadata to Describe Digital Content. This is a very important step because the metadata helps your users find the objects that the project has just spent time and money digitizing.
The fifth lesson in the course discusses Digital Reformatting and File Management. It’s important to remember that digitization is not a form of preservation and that the digital files created during the process must also be preserved. As such, this lesson discusses how that process works.
The sixth, and last lesson, in the course is Promoting Use of Your Digital Content, it describes how to market the digitization project that you’ve just finished creating. There’s no point in doing all of this hard work to digitize items if no one can find them! Learn how to use social media to your advantage to get users to your content.
Overall, I think that the DPLA is going to be very influential in how digitization and digital collections are created as they work with archives, libraries, and museums to get content to users. As a new student to SLIS at UW-Madison, I found this curriculum to be a great introductory guide that explains digitization from start to finish. I hope you will too.