Digital Archiving Resources

Creating digital collections: a practical guide

Title

Creating digital collections: a practical guide

Subject

Archives
Archives--Digitization

Description

Libraries recognize the importance of digitizing archival material to improve access to and preservation of their special collections. This book provides a step-by-step guide for creating digital collections, including examples and practical tips.

It illustrates concepts with an ongoing case study at the end of each chapter, and provides detailed technical information and practical experience, along with practitioners' insight in digitization.
It can be used as a guide for creating digital collections.

Its contents include:

Introduction
- What are digital collections?
- Why create digital collections?
- Case study: the Digital Collections Production Center

Planning and managing digitisation projects
- Key components of a digitisation cycle
- Project management
- Developing a project plan
- Case study: DCPC’s planning and management

Selecting material for digitisation
- Differences between selecting traditional material and selecting for digitisation
- Major considerations in developing selection criteria
- Case study: DCPC’s selection policy and service

Metadata strategy
- What is metadata?
- Roles of metadata
- Metadata standards
- Metadata strategy
- Digital object content model
- Case study: DCPC metadata strategies
- Creating digital collections

Digitising material
- Basic concepts for scanning
- Scanning best practices
- Image processing
- Case study: DCPC’s scanning service

Creating metadata
- Content rules for metadata creation
- Standards vs. local decisions
- Controlled vocabularies
- Tools for metadata creation
- Computer-assisted metadata creation
- Metadata crosswalk (data mapping)
- Case study: DCPC’s metadata creation

Designing a user interface for digital collections
- Importance of user interface design
- Related issues of user interface design
- Principles of user interface design
- Process of user interface design and configuration
- Case study: designing the user interface for the DCPC’s digital collections

The complete digitisation process and workflow management
- Workflow management
- Prototyping and quality control
- Maintenance

Digital collections management system
- The digital collections production chain
- Digital collections management system technology
- Storage repository
- Digital collections management system software
- Case study: the DCPC digital collections management system

Selecting software and hardware for digital collections management systems
- Identify organisational requirements and resources
- Develop selection criteria
- Research available systems and equipment
- Evaluate candidates – a checklist
- Hardware selection
- Case study: DCPC software selection for the DCMS

Documentation
- The importance of documentation
- How to document a project and what to document
- Planning documents
- Management documents
- Technical documents
- Statistics
- Case study: DCPC’s documentation

The knowledge and skills required for creating digital collections
- Management
- Material selection
- Scanning
- Metadata
- User interface
- Information technology
- Key qualities

Conclusion

Creator

Zhang, Allison B.
Gourley, Don

Publisher

Chandos

Date

2008-09

Contributor

Polk, Victoria

Rights

Chandos

Type

Book

Identifier

ISBN-10: 1843343967
ISBN-13: 978-1843343967

Bibliographic Citation

Zhang, Allison B. and Don Gourley. Creating digital collections: a practical guide. Oxford: Chandos Pub., 2009.

Files

Item105.jpg

Citation

Zhang, Allison B. and Gourley, Don, “Creating digital collections: a practical guide,” Digital Archiving Resources, accessed April 27, 2024, https://dar.cah.ucf.edu/items/show/105.