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.