Digitisation Workshop Pres 2008(V1)

Digitisation Revolutionising Library Management Day 2 Sydney, April 2007 Mal Booth – Head, Research Centre

Where am I from? The Memorial’s Research Centre functions as a library and an archive. We develop, manage and provide public access to Australia’s official, personal, & published records of war.

Global trends in digitisation
Faster, better, cheaper equipment & storage
Better DAMS & CMS software
Institutional repositories
More audio & film
Collaboration
Shared collections (eg. Picture Australia)
Mass digitisation programs: Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Open Content Alliance (OCA), Internet Archive

I’m not sure what these are, but they are important!
Dynamism
Preservation (as a benefit & obligation)
Playing
Management & planning
Compromise
Access

Recent Digitisation Examples
WW1, WW2, Korea & Vietnam unit war diaries
260k+ images of our collections
Official histories (published works)
Digitisation on demand

Digitisation on demand Currently running at 90,000 pp p.a.

About one fifth of these images

What we will cover today
1. GETTING STARTED
a. Why and what to digitise?
b. How (preservation/access) & Principles
c. Copyright and IP considerations (briefly)
d. Resources needed; in-house or outsource?
e. Process outline: from planning to long term maintenance (life-cycle)
2. METHODS, CONTENT & STORAGE
a. Production: file formats & standards, scanners & cameras, software
b. Output: indexing, access, search optimisation, delivery options
c. Storage, ongoing maintenance & management requirements
d. Just doing it, lessons learned & key issues

Why and what to digitise?
WHY
Increase & broaden access (remote & 24/7)
Fragile, valuable &/or unique materials (loss or damage would be catastrophic)
Support research & education
Anticipating future use or re-use
Improved search & retrieval
Promoting knowledge, understanding & recognition of collections
Relationships to other collections
Preservation of at-risk collections by risk reduction & conservation
WHAT : popular collections; fragile/unique; at-risk; significant priorities; relationships (corporate or collaborative); & what you have the right to digitise!

How: some Principles* - Collections
( organised groups of objects )
Agreed collection development policy
Sound description
Lifecycle curation
Broad access to all
Respect for IP
Evaluation for use & usefulness
Interoperability
Integration of staff & user workflows
Sustainability & continued usability
* NISO Framework of Guidance for the Building of Good Digital Collections

How: some Principles - Objects
( digital assets )
Production ensures collection priorities & maintains interoperability and re-use
Preservability: persistence & accessibility over time; across evolving media, software & formats
Meaningful outside its context: portable, reusable, interoperable
Persistent identifiers: URLs or URIs
Authentication: veracity, accuracy & authenticity
Inclusion of associated metadata: descriptive, administrative & structural

How: some Principles - Metadata
( selection and implementation of information about objects: descriptive; administrative; technical; structural; & preservation )
Appropriate to materials, users and use
Support for interoperability: mappings & crosswalks between schemes
Use of authority control and content standards
Includes a clear statement on conditions of use for the objects (eg. fair use)
Support for long term management, eg. PREMIS
Metadata records are treated as digital objects

How: some Principles - Initiatives
( the creation & management of collections )
A substantial design and planning component
Appropriate staffing and expertise
Best practice project management
An evaluation plan
A project report that documents the process & outcomes
Consideration of the entire lifecycle (ongoing management)

Copyright & Intellectual Property (1)
Concerns:
What sort of items are protected by copyright?
What is the duration of copyright protection?
What sorts of activities infringe copyright?
When is a copyright licence required?
Understanding the “exceptions” to copyright infringement
See: Copyright and Cultural Institutions: Short Guidelines for Digitisation by Emily Hudson and Andrew Kenyon & ACC’s S pecial case exception: education, libraries, collections (deals with the new section 200AB)

IFLA/IPA Statement on Orphaned Works

Resources required (1)
Hardware – scanners, cameras, computers, monitors, digital storage, memory & processing power
Software – scanning, OCR, office apps, image editing & management, DAM?, video/audio capture, metadata capture?, file conversion, calibration
Furnishings – for staff, computers, scanners, storage
Facility space – scanning, preparation & storage, QA
Specialist staff – curatorial, cataloguers, IT/DBA, web, scanning, project management, conservators
Training needs
Conservation needs – archival supplies & consultancies
Budget funds – salaries, hardware/software purchases & lease, licenses, running/ongoing costs, contingency
Corporate support – context within corporate or other priorities and strategies

WW1 Diaries scanning facilities Approximately 200,000 high res. images per year

Outsource or Inhouse?
Contractor responsible for capital equipment, training and technology obsolescence costs costs
No need to find scanning space
Less need for digitisation knowledge
Economies of scale (& capability for large volumes & throughput)
The bureau may be able to achieve a better quality result & have a broader range of services
A better fix on costs and timescales (but these can vary widely)
Better institutional knowledge, understanding & capacity
Less risk than working with external parties
Better ability to meet specific needs and deadlines?
Cheaper costs for oversized or non-standard materials?
QA may be more efficient
Saving on transport and insurance and less risk with onsite scanning
Assured staff and expertise

Dealing with an external bureau
Clear contracts are important
Choosing a bureau – check with reference sites
Range and scope of material - non-standard materials
Collaboration with others to achieve further economies of scale may be possible
QA can be a project killer
Metadata – what will the bureau record?
Consider partial outsourcing or bringing a specialist partner onsite

Some funding options
Program funding – dependent on corporate priorities
User pays – but will they?
Grants - eg. http:// www.nla.gov.au /chg/
Donors or sponsors - from or associated with a web presence
Collection Depreciation – depends on valuation and an accounting standard
As a training activity – can be viable learning experience for a small team & project
New policy proposals

“ Investing in an Intangible Asset”
The benefits of long term preservation of digital assets are difficult to value (reliably and objectively), but the costs of not doing so are high if action isn’t taken. More information on costs and benefits is needed .
Digital preservation is still new, so there is scope for market creation & development, research and experimentation .
Information managers know why such programs are important, but find it hard to communicate this to those who control our finances. Business cases based on empirical evidence need something like the balanced scorecard approach to bridge the gap between us and decision makers .
Digital preservation is still an organisational innovation and must be managed effectively as it is dependent on independently driven technological developments.
From DCC’s Investment in an Intangible Asset

The AWM Document Digitisation Process

Cornell’s digital imaging process map
Radiating out from the goals and deliverables of the project are the institutional resources
The outer wheel represents the processes or stages of digital imaging initiatives – clockwise from Selection

Draft DCC Curation Lifecycle

PRODUCTION: file formats and standards
Commonly used formats:
TIFF
JPEG
GIF
PDF
Future formats:
JPEG 2000
PNG

PRODUCTION: file formats – how and where they are used

PRODUCTION: scanners & cameras
Flatbed scanners
Map/plan scanners
Overhead scanners
Digital cameras
Book scanners
Book-edge scanners
Microfilm and slide scanners

PRODUCTION: software
Image editing software
Consider: cost; hardware requirements; usability; functionality
Options : Adobe Photoshop CS3 (expensive/best) & Photoshop Elements (cheap); Gimp (free); + prop. software for RAW files
Derivative and pdf production: Acrobat Writer (expensive); ImageMagick (conversion software); Ghostscript (pdf interpreter); & pdftk (pdf toolkit)
Other useful open source software:
JHOVE object validation
FedoraCommons object repository management system
ebXML e-business suite
Xena digital document preservation software (from NAA)
DSpace institutional repository system
DROID automated batch identification of file formats (from TNA UK)

OUTPUT
Indexing
Most descriptive metadata will come from your MARC records
If a separate database is needed: Access, SQL & Oracle
Access options (also part of just doing it )
Collection OPACs , databases , Zoomify , EAD , DVDs, CDs
Other: Blogs , Facebook ArtShare , Flickr , Facebook page
Search engine optimisation
How can I create a Google-friendly site?

STORAGE & MAINTENANCE
Storage
Consider : Speed (read/write, data transfer); Capacity; Reliability (stability, redundancy); Standardization; Cost; & Fitness to task
Management, maintenance & preservation
Digital preservation practices
Preservation metadata
Trusted digital repositories?

What we want
Accuracy / authenticity
Searchability
Easy navigation & download
Cost effectiveness
Good quality product
Text capture and search (OCR) where poss.
Integration
Scalability
Web interactivity
Simple solutions
Costs estimates escalate
Technology has limits, but is improving
You learn with new technology by doing
There is more to copyright than owning it
Anticipate needs & increasing expectations
$ hard to find for access (sponsorship?)
Better management & storage of assets
A need to educate managers & suppliers!
Keeping trained staff is a challenge
Costs/benefits of new technologies ( risk ?)
Importance of QA in projects!
Need for a strategic plan(s)
Be prepared to compromise
What we are finding Lessons

Enterprise Content Management: management, search & web facilities for digital assets and services
Extensive digital asset management features
Excellent electronic document & record management
Intuitive web content management features
Facilitate simple and complex workflow processes
Extensive and unified searching constructs
Scaleable
Compliant with all government recordkeeping requirements & emerging digital preservation standards
Integrate easily with existing Memorial systems
Simple to administer in terms of security, auditing & storage management

Other Corporate Systems Digital Asset Management Electronic Document & Records Management Record Management E:mail Memorial Intranet Web Content Management AJRP Website Lotus Notes OAI Interface FIRST OPAC MICA OPAC (CAS) ‏ ECM - Conceptual Overview CMS Digital Object Mgmt System DOMS Biographical Databases & War Diaries RecordSearch NAA Collection Mgmt MICA Library System FIRST Fund Raising System Raisers Edge Financial & HR System SAP POS System, Advance Retail CAS Internal Orders OnLine Shop Search Photocopy Quotes ReQuest eSales PICTION

implementing user-friendly technologies
make sure they are findable and useable
pick a few “winners” & lead by example
collaborate & network
get involved in your core business
don't leave it to IT-staff
learn to compromise (the 80:20 rule) ‏
experiment
start now! it is sometimes easier to seek forgiveness than gain permission

JISC 2007 – five key issues for digitisation
Re-focus on the user (simple, easily found & used output)
Aggregate and present content that can resonate with multiple communities
Learn from Google & YouTube but keep our values
New business models are needed, collaborating with and without the private sector
More collaboration between publishers, curators, funders, users, vendors and standards bodies

Digitisation Workshop Pres 2008(V1)

by Mal Booth on Apr 06, 2008

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Digitisation Workshop Pres 2008(V1) — Presentation Transcript