presenter notes How do institutions approach what is digitized? How do they prioritize what gets digitized now, or later?

presenter notes In the Prescott, Andrew and Hughs reading from this week, they addressed concepts of both “slow” and “mass” digitization. They wrote: “[S]trategic approach[es] to the selection of material for digitization has not been widely adopted”. Issues surrounding patchwork funding models for digitization has resulted in “a lack of consensus as to what criteria should be adopted in selecting material for digitization” and that “[L]ibraries frequently undertake digitization programs in response to ad hoc managerial requirements rather than any strategic need.” They also point to more scathing critiques of digitization efforts, highlighting “preoccupation[s] with cultural treasures and canonical works” which are made more for “entertainment” rather than scholarship, and how digitization for the purpose of access subjects cultural materials to a “a digital sausage machine”. Given this quote, and other readings that you were assigned this week, try and answer: Why can’t institutions, organizations, or individuals just “digitize it all” now?

presenter notes Image from: https://www.nedcc.org/about/nedcc-stories/town-death-records Over the next few slides, we will be reviewing digitization considerations put forth by the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC). NEDCC was founded in 1973, and was the first independent conservation laboratory in the United States to specialize exclusively in the conservation and preservation of paper-based collections. They have since expanded their work to include other materials, like audio-visual works. They produce guides, blog posts, and other literature online with helpful information for individuals and institutions on how to approach conservation and digitization management. This includes their Preservation and Selection for Digitization guidelines, which we will be stepping through over these next few slides.

presenter notes Per Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC)’s guidance to selection (https://www.nedcc.org/free-resources/preservation-leaflets/6.-reformatting/6.6-preservation-and-selection-for-digitization), there is “No absolute criteria guide selection for digitization, only questions to be addressed within the context of the individual institution. Each institution has its own reasons and priorities for digitization, from a national library responsible for preserving and presenting the published heritage of its citizens, to a small museum seeking publicity for its collections. The selector’s job is to apply local interpretation to a general set of selection criteria and principles, matching local goals and priorities to the materials and media in the collection.” These questions are: 1) Should they be digitized; 2) May they be digitized; 3) Can they be digitized?

presenter notes Before embarking on any sort of digitization effort, whether ad hoc or programmatic, it’s important for initiators to ask themselves, Should we digitize? Digitization decisions should consider content value, demand, potential enhancements, and technical feasibility to ensure the preservation and accessibility of valuable materials.

presenter notes A huge deciding factor in selecting for digital preservation is whether or not your institution holds the appropriate rights to make digitized items available through a digital library or other public-facing catalog. You should know, first and foremost, that institutions have the legal right to digitize materials that are under copyright if the purpose is preservation only. Access, in these cases, will likely be restricted to on-premises, which obviously bars users for a variety of reasons. But, if your purpose for preservation is for preservation only, then you can go ahead and digitize. However, it is so rarely the case that institutions preserve for preservation’s sake. Unless you hold the legal right to make these digital copies accessible, or know that these works are in the public domain, then your last step would be to obtain permissions from rights holders. This step alone can be very time consuming, especially for those works where there are multiple rights holders. Additionally, you may have collections that contain a variety of public domain and copyrighted materials. An example of this type of collection was given by the Yolkowski and Jamieson article. Here, they placed orphaned collection items into 1 of 2 risk factor buckets. By categorizing the works in this way, they could make quick decisions about prioritizing processing works at a lower risk, first. This is an interesting approach to a rights framework. We will cover rights more in Digitization Workflows - Part II. But just know that this is a very important question to ask first. https://www2.archivists.org/publications/brochures/deeds-of-gift

presenter notes Image credit: University Library Media Commons: Scanning https://www.library.illinois.edu/sc/technology/scanning/

presenter notes Image credit: University Library Media Commons: Scanning https://www.library.illinois.edu/sc/technology/scanning/

presenter notes When digitizing flat or paper-based materials, precision matters. Every detail, from the depth of color to the sharpness of the smallest text, depends on adhering to standardized specifications. These specs are usually first set through image capture policies, which dictates how the equipment is calibrated. However, calibrations depend on the material being captured, and may require adjustments or re-captures.

presenter notes https://www.digitizationguidelines.gov/guidelines/DRAFT%20Technical%20Guidelines%20for%20Digitizing%20Cultural%20Heritage%20Materials%20-%203rd%20Edition.pdf FADGI was established to develop common guidelines and technical specifications for digitizing cultural heritage materials, such as manuscripts, photographs, maps, and audiovisual materials, among others. Its goal is to ensure that digital copies of these materials are created with high quality and are suitable for long-term preservation and access.

presenter notes The FADGI Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Cultural Heritage Materials document, last updated a couple of years ago, covers a wide range of topics related to digitization, such as ideal image capture, color management, file formats, metadata, and quality assurance. The guidelines are based on best practices from the fields of library science, archival science, and digital imaging, among others.

presenter notes This is a very, very simplified table showing high-level FADGI recommendations.

presenter notes Require that a file format extension must always be present. We recommend using a period followed by a three-character file extension at the end of all file names for identification of data format (for example, .tif, .jpg, .gif, .pdf, .wav, .mpg, etc.) Take into account the maximum number of items to be scanned and reflect that in the number of digits used (if following a numerical scheme). Use leading 0’s to facilitate sorting in numerical order (if following a numerical scheme). Do not use an overly complex or lengthy naming scheme that is susceptible to human error during manual input. Use lowercase characters and file extensions. Record metadata embedded in file names (such as scan date, page number, etc.) in another location in addition to the file name. This provides a safety net for moving files across systems inthe future, in the event that they must be renamed. In particular, sequencing information and major structural divisions of multi-part objects should be explicitly recorded in the structural metadata and not only embedded in filenames. Although it is not recommended to embed too much information into the file name, a certain amount of information can serve as minimal descriptive metadata for the file, as an economical alternative to the provision of richer data elsewhere. Alternatively, if meaning is judged to be temporal, it may be more practical to use a simple numbering system. An intellectually meaningful name will then have to be correlated with the digital resource in an external database.

presenter notes Here are three examples of filenaming conventions that generally abide to what was discussed in the previous slide. As you can see, filenames can vary, and will depending on your institution, the system(s) you are using to generate files, other systems’ conventions, etc.