APLA digitisation presentation 2008

State Library of Tasmania

Digitisation in the

Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office


Introductions… • Noelene Kelly

Manager (Systems Projects – Integration)

Systems Support & Development

Community Knowledge Network

• Mandy Oliver

Manager (Digital Services)

Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office

Community Knowledge Network


What will we cover today?

• Basic digitisation concepts and options

• Key digitisation documents

• Some examples:

– Community Knowledge Network

– Parliamentary Archives - UK


Digitisation – What is it? • ‘Converting objects or records to electronic format usually

through digital imaging or electronic recordkeeping.’ (Collections Council of Australia)

• ‘Digitising or digitisation is representing an object, image, document or a signal (usually an analogue signal) by a discrete set of its points or samples. The result is called "digital representation" or, more specifically, a "digital image", for the object, and "digital form", for the signal.’ (Wikipedia)


Digitisation…Where do we start? • Research the concept, what others are doing and what is involved


Then…

…define for your library:

– Why?

– What?

– Who?

– How?


Why do we digitise?

To preserve our Heritage


Why do we digitise?

To provide wider access


What do you digitise?

• Organisational priorities

• Understand your holdings/collections

• Stakeholder input


Who should digitise?

• In-house

• Out-source

• Partnerships


How….The Critical Components

• Equipment

• Standards

• Storage

• Delivery


Equipment


Some desktop requirements…


Digitisation Standards

• Minimum standards based on National

Library of Australia

http://www.nla.gov.au/digital/capture.html

• Preservation standards

http://www.nla.gov.au/digital/capture.html


Storage and Management

• Where will you store the digital objects?

• Cost of storage

• Backup and Recovery

• Preservation Issues


Search and Delivery

• Copyright/ownership

• Easy to access

• Search Engines – discovery & relevancy

• Integration with other sites

• OCR


Key Documents

• Digitisation Policy

• Digitisation Standards

• Annual Plan - Digitisation Program

• Communication & Marketing plan


Australian Strategies


What is CKN doing?

• Community Knowledge Network encompasses:

– State Library of Tasmania

– Archives Office of Tasmania

– Adult Education

– Online Access Centres


Tasmanian Archive and Heritage

Office

• Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office (TAHO) sits within State Library of Tasmania

• Digital Services sits within TAHO and has responsibility for Digitisation, Reprographics, e-Heritage and STORS


What is TAHO doing?

• Prior to October 2007, some digitisation

of images, plans and audio tapes within the

Heritage Collection

• Six pilot projects were selected to test

digitisation of various formats, resourcing

models and equipment


Media Centre Negatives…



Pictorial Newspaper Images

• Weekly Courier and

Tasmanian Mail

newspapers.

• Culturally significant

• High demand





Digitised Microfilm

• Digitise from Microfilm or original?

• Outsourcing vs in-house

• OCR

• Review microfilming strategy



Partnerships

• Melbourne University & University of

Tasmania – convict records

• Archives CD Books – Police Gazettes

• eHeritage – local history organisations


Storage and Management

• Currently a number of systems:

– Access Databases

– File Shares

– DigiTool

• Moving to an integrated Archives and

Heritage approach


Search and Delivery

• Currently separate searching and

delivery

• Links to bibliographic or index

records

• Towards integrated searching


Search and Delivery


Parliamentary Archives UK

• Digitisation Strategy

• Digitisation Policy

• Digitisation Programme


Digitisation of Hansard

• UK Parliament close to completing

• Primary reasons – access, enabling free-text searching and preservation

• OCR outsourced to India with 99.5% accuracy

• Images captured as TIFF files at a resolution of 300dpi

• Copies are made as JPEG files


Digitisation of Hansard • OCR carried out using a triple-compare process

developed by the contractors

• Metadata generated automatically

• As of March 2008, with the exception of a few

volumes requiring rescanning, the complete run

of Hansards (1803-general election of 2005)

captured – about 2.75 million pages


Hansard - Useful Sites

• Text files on Internet for free download

(about 1/3 available as of March 08) : – http://www.parliament.uk.publications/archives.cfm

• Experimental database and search

interface available on Internet :

– http://hansard.millbanksystems.com

http://www.parliament.uk.publications/archives.cfm

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/


Preservation

• Starting to look at this issue

• TIFF files for digitised Hansard constitute

about 40TB data (stored on portable

hard drives)


Where to from here?

• Develop a digitisation strategy

• A few key questions will get you started:

– What do you want to digitise and why

– Do you have the expertise and equipment in-house?

– Can you develop partnerships with other

organisations/parliamentary libraries

– How will you store, manage and deliver the digitised

objects?

– Develop a Digitisation PROGRAM not a Project


Thank you!!

Technology

APLA digitisation presentation 2008