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Digitization Handbook

Process

Rationale may be based on one or several factors, such as

  • your organisation may want to modernize collection access and use;
  • your organisation may want to expand access, especially for items you expect to have high use and re-use traffic;
  • your organisation may want to address preservation issues, particularly for analog or physical materials showing signs of deterioration; or
  • your organisation may want to convert analog materials into digital forms
  • your organisation may want to reformat born digital records in analog source carrier into current standard file formats.

Some considerations to decide what -part of- your collection, materials, building or site to digitise, are listed below.

Is -part of - your collection, materials, building or site at risk?

Focus on those parts of your collection/cultural heritage that are at risk or have high re-use value in digitised form. NB. This is also a focus of the European Commission

How would your targeted audience use the content that you have digitised?

Consider the target user group(s) for whom you would digitise and how they would use such content. Different (re-) use cases may require different equipment and digitisation strategies, and different minimum quality levels.

Some aspects you may consider are:

  • Added value: Digitisation opens up new possibilities. Automatic text or pattern recognition improves search capabilities. Linking entities increases research opportunities. New technologies such as 3D improve the attractiveness and usability of the material.
  • Uniqueness: Are the objects rare or unique?
  • Scope: It is often reasonable, for example, due to the research value of the material, to digitize collections of material related to a certain issue, rather than individual objects that are not related to each other in any way.
  • Impact: How much does digitisation of materials increase the visibility and significance of the organisation? How does it improve possibilities to get new funding?

What type of cultural heritage are you planning to digitise?

Examine the features and characteristics of what you would digitise. Are these documents, images, audio/video materials, objects, buildings/structures, sites?

Who should be involved?

If there are persons or departments in your organisation, with expertise such as communication, education, conservation, or copyright law, involve them in co-designing and following up the digitisation project. If you are lacking expertise and skills, you can ask your national or domain aggregator for advice. See chapter 3 Digitization of the selected objects or materials. You can also read back the section on how to digitise in chapter 1 Planning of the project.

What collection objects or materials are eligible for digitisation depends on an organisation’s resources, as described in 1. Planning of the Project. Items may include but are not limited to

  • textual records (e.g., manuscripts, correspondence, reports, maps, etc.)
  • visual records (e.g., photographic prints, slides, 35 mm negative films, glass plate negatives, etc.)
  • audio objects (e.g., cassette tapes, ¼” analog tapes, etc.)
  • moving images (8mm, 16mm, or 35mm)
  • born digital records in analog source carriers (e.g., floppy disks, compact disks, etc.)
  • physical objects such as museum objects, historic buildings, archaeological sites (digitised either in 2D images or 3D models)

Further reading https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000244280