Digitization 101 for Historians: Why and How

Presented to the GAHWNY Spring 2016 meeting,

Batavia NY

Digitization:

Overview

• Why? What?• Things to consider• Tips of the trade, do’s and don’ts and

sometimes maybe’s, and comments on why doing this work can promote history with digital projects.

What about rights?

• See: http://rightsstatements.org… It “provides a set of standardized rights

statements that can be used to communicate the copyright and re-use status of digital objects to the public”

Why? - Simple questions to start

• What do you have that is unique?• What is easy to do and what is difficult?• What do you have that already has a description?• Are the materials in good enough shape to

digitize?• Do you have clear title to what you want to do?

What?

• Pictures• Indexes• Newspapers• Films• Correspondence• Maps• And whatever you think is a good idea

• Are materials in the public domain?• Do you need to get permission ?• What’s your risk tolerance?• Would you allow commercial use (as opposed

to academic/educational use?)• Have a take down policy.

• To be blunt: why have a collection if no one knows

about it or uses it?

Each of you has items, and you know your collection best. How could this be leveraged to get more usage, bearing in mind that you have fairly few hours to devote to this? Perhaps by digitizing and displaying?

What are we talking about?

• Hidden collections, at the various levels – village town, county. Where are they? In what format are they found? Are there indexes?

• Will you or the creating/owning agency allow examination or copying?

• Pictures, films, audio/video?• DO NOT try and do everything immediately.

Build things out slowly and accurately.

• Connecting to collections – the main reason that this should be done.

• Get support from institutions (educational, historical, etc.), from the community, possibly from grant agencies, and some effort on your part – time, curiosity, energy, enthusiasm.

• Digital output must meet user requirements for searching/finding, and being able to be used. [Fulton vs. NYS Historic Newspapers]

Things to consider

• Plan. Plan. Plan.• Selecting materials for a digitizing project.• Copyright.• What equipment do you need? What standards

and guidelines should you follow?• Do you do metadata? How much? • What are those standards?• How and where should you publish the results?• Long term viability.

• Here’s some real life examples of digitized items:

Metadata

60,000 card index

The RGS-CRPC processing view

Steps to take

• Have an idea• Determine ahead. Plan specifications.• This is where your library resource council

could be mighty handy! They host vendors who have information on digitization.

• Set up a standards list/metadata template.• Do the scanning.• Do a test upload.

Tips of the trade

• Do the digitization.• When you are ready to upload create a guide

“splash” page to serve and a table of contents.• Get it marketed – through NY Heritage, the

DPLA, Facebook, etc.

Usage

• How do you determine that?• How much extra work do you want?• Can it be used by students?

What kind of hosting do you want?

• Will it be online at all, or only for you in your office?

• Could you put it on the town’s server? Partner with an educational institution? Put in NY Heritage, or the DPLA?

Another real life example

The RGS CRPC stats

Equipment

• Scanners – should be able to do 1200/2400 dpi at least. Might be able to do Optical Character Recognition while scanning text. (Adds 10 per cent in size)

• Cameras• Sheet fed scanners

What does the RGS CRPC use?

• Two cameras.. a Canon T2i ($250) and a Canon T3i ($400). Both have high quality 35 mm lenses. The sheet fed scanner we use for the index cards is a Epson GTS50 ($230).

• We also have built a look down holder

Home built, in use.

• Can you do it yourself on the cheap?

A real life practitioner

• I would strongly recommend the work that Amanda (Mandi) Shepp has done, especially the presentation on Digital Collections: a Future for Small Museums. She is the librarian at Lily Dale, and has done an interview for the WNYLRC.

• [http://wnylrcwatch.org/newsletter/?p=7533] and• [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_yGloTHOM0]

A DIY Black Box

A steal at 150 dollars

Stitched together from 11 individual pictures

And it stitches handwriting as well!

An example of data visualization

Viewshare (Lib of Congress)

Sample projects

• An example of something that was pertinent to a community’s local history as well as being very interesting

A person you may know: