Before you start
Before you start digitizing a selected part of your collection(s), it’s important that you consider the following:
- What do you want to achieve and who do you want to reach with your digitized collection?
- If you know what you want to digitize, can you estimate quantities, complexity, time needed, staff needed and budget needed?
- Do you have sufficient in-house resources (human and equipment)? Or will you outsource part of the work?
- Do you have sufficient budget available?
- Select the documents/works (see table below); what types of materials will you digitize?
- What type of digitized material will you produce? I.e. 3D-models? 2D-images?
- What standards will you adhere to, both for data and metadata?
- How will you document the whole process?
- Restore what needs to be restored before digitization
- If possible, make a Pilot project, digitize part of the collection and learn from it
- Make the whole thing a “project*
| 1. Selection | 2. Editing and Preparation | 3. Publishing Online |
|---|---|---|
| This part explains how to start planning your Digital Collection, how to select appropriate material and what are the limits in selecting it. | There are only 2 types of material available. Static and Movable. | Hardware requirements or other solutions for web publishing. |
| Select material for digitization and publishing. | Static includes all textual material, photos, paintings, buildings … | Choosing the right Digital Repository Software. |
| Copyrights limit us to publish all we want. | Movable includes Audio and Video materials | Minimal requirements for Digital Repository (e.g. Metadata, preview, OCR?…) |
| Depending of material type, copyrights are different, regarding the years when it became PUBLIC ACCESS | Hardware requirements: Static - Scanners and Camera Movable - Audio and Video players with digital capture additional hardware | Publishing to Europeana, contact your National Europeana Aggregator. |
| Standards ? for capturing and preparation of working files Master copies for archiving and working files for edit and use. | ||
| Software needed to capture and edit the material. | ||
| Goal of Section 1 | Goal of Section 2 | Goal of Section 3 |
| To explain what is Digital Repository, the purpose of digitization, how to select appropriate material. | Explain a process of digitization, hardware and software requirements, standards for appropriate material. Define a FLOSS list for editing and capturing. | Explain hardware and software requirements, main web standards, Digital Repository FLOSS solutions and their difference. |
| Publish on Europeana portal recommendations. |