Home | Digitisation (Summary)
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Resource Description
It is essential that the digitised material should be properly catalogued and appropriate metadata made available. Librarians need to be aware both of the cataloguing traditions of other professional disciplines (such as the use of the Encoded Archival Description (EAD) by archivists) as well as emerging metadata approaches in the electronic environment (particularly Dublin Core). Lee devotes considerable space to these issues and there is guidance in the UK nof-digitise ‘Technical Standards and Guidelines’. (See also resource description). In addition to descriptive metadata, it may be necessary to develop or adopt schemas for language, geographical location, rights, ratings, version and educational level.

Protection of Images
There are two major issues to consider under this heading:

• The protection of images in the long-term, or digital preservation. There is a wealth of guidance available on this issue. A starting point would be the European Commission on Preservation and Access.

• The protection of rights to images, for example to prevent unauthorised use. A variety of techniques are available, such as watermarking and encryption. A number of commercial systems are available for this purpose e.g. Digimarc, and there is also an explanation of the technology.
  (See also copyright)

Workflow
In-house or outsourced?
The most basic workflow question is whether the project should be run in-house or outsourced. Local circumstances may well dictate the course of action, but the following considerations apply.

In-house advantages:

• Full control over materials and processing

• Materials not subject to hazards of transportation

• Quick assessment of output quality

• Rapid formative evaluation feedback (see below)

• Could be cheaper, but precise costing difficult

• Own staff develop expertise

• Ownership of hardware and software

• No contractual obligations to a third party if difficulties are encountered.

Outsourcing advantages:

• Detailed management of the process is the contractor’s responsibility

• No hardware, software or accommodation requirements in-house (apart from what is required for display of images)

• Draws on experience and expertise of the supplier

• No lead-in time for staff training

• Costs clear from the outset

• Up-to-date hardware and software will be used.

If a decision is made to explore outsourcing a comprehensive directory is available: ‘Document Management Guide and Directory: a comprehensive guide to document management and a comprehensive directory of products and services for imaging and document management’ 11th edition, 2000. ISBN 0-9537954-0-3, ISSN 1366-6584.

General Workflow
The workflow for any digitisation process needs to be planned carefully. Lee goes into this subject in some detail.

Costs
It is impossible to give any general estimate of costs, because the factors involved are so many and so varied. Gould and Ebdon calculated from their world-wide survey in 1999 that the average cost of digitisation per page was US$7.72 (range US$0.12 to US$15), per book US$70.66 (range US$28 to US$154) and per serial issue US$14 (range US$14 to US$14). A paper on costing by S. Tanner and J. Lomax-Smith provides useful advice.

Staffing
Some libraries are fortunate to have experienced staff available but for many digitisation skills have to be learned.

Delivery systems
The most common delivery system in use today is the World Wide Web. Libraries may host their own web sites, have them hosted by their local authority or use a third party service.
It is usually best to hold images in a database. For larger collections, or where the metadata or other requirements are complex, a specialist package may be best. (For an example, see inVisage from iBase, now marketed by the library systems supplier, Talis.)

Evaluation
The assessment of image quality (and equivalent for non-visual media) is again a highly complex issue which requires expert input. It is recommended that an expert source, such as Franziska Frey’s ‘Measuring Quality Of Digital Masters’ in the US Guides to Quality in Visual Resource Imaging series, be consulted.

Optical Character Recognition
OCR has been used by many libraries to digitise catalogue records as well as primary content. Modern software is capable of accurate interpretation of even poor-quality originals, although human checking is usually still necessary. Obviously, if it is necessary to preserve layout – such as the relationship between zones of text or text arranged in tables – then a further level of complexity is added to the task. Among typical OCR packages which might be employed by libraries are Scansoft's OmniPage Pro and ExperVision TypeReader Pro.

The state of the art in public libraries is highly variable. Some have run, and continue to run, highly complex digitisation programmes. Others have no experience in this field. There is thus a high level of opportunity for sharing expertise and good practice.

Public libraries have been involved in discussions at European level and have participated in policy workshops and conferences. Most funded activity has been through DGXIII and the cultural heritage programmes. There are fewer examples of cross-European involvement of libraries where the focus is on other fields (such as education).

There has been a vast amount of digitisation activity world-wide. US libraries are very active (see Links).

Home | Digitisation (Summary)
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