Wisconsin Heritage Online wiki / Planning

For a good introduction to digitization, see Cornell's Digital Imaging Tutorial. Not all aspects are relevant for WHO hosted contributors, but it's a great general resource.

Collection Development

Here's the powerpoint presentation, Collection Development Concerns, presented at the May 12 Utilizing Your Institution's Photographic Resources workshop, sponsored by the Wisconsin Federation of Museums and the Wisconsin Historical Society. I use the speaker notes to expand on the points on the slides.

Collection Development Concerns.ppt

Samples of documents for collection acquistion and maintenance

Gift Deed

Selecting Materials

Collections uploaded to WHO must adhere to the selection criteria and collection development policy (see below). But even before that, decisions about what materials to digitize should be made after careful and realistic consideration of questions such as: is there a actually demand for these materials? (just having some interesting images does not justify digitization) Will digitization eliminate wear and tear on fragile originals? Would digitizing these particular items fit into our organization's mission?

Cost Estimation

There are many invisible costs to digitization projects, and careful planning is necessary to prevent unpleasant surprises. WHO requires that all contributing organizations be committed to sustaining their digital collections into the future. This requires resources explicitly dedicated to: staff (both during and after the digitization process), long-term storage of digital files, software/hardware upgrades, and migration.

WHO document Estimating Costs for a Digital Project
RLG's Worksheet for Estimating Digital Reformatting Costs
UCLA's guide to Planning and Budgeting a Digital Project
National Initiative for a Networked Cultural Heritage Cost of Digitization (2003)

Planning Checklists

From the Library of Congress there are two useful checklists:
- ChecklistToPlanProcessing.pdf
- project_planning_checklist.pdf
From OCLC CONTENTdm:
- implementation-checklist.pdf

Accessibility

Issues of accessibility are significant for digital projects. Your digital collections may be subject to federal, state, or organizational accessibility requirements.

Funding

Will you need a grant to help with your project? Check out the Grants Information Collection, A Cooperating Collection of the Foundation Center Library Network hosted by the University of Wisconsin.

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