Building Digitized Special Collections

by Erika Purdy

My post seeks to answer how items are digitized to become part of a special collection. While there are a multitude of steps to get from a physical artifact to a digital special collection, which all vary based on the resources of the organization, I have found that the process of digitization generally follows three larger categories: selection, transference, and identification.

SELECTION

Before any item can be digitized, it must first be selected. Just as with non-digitized collections, information professionals must pay attention to a variety of factors that affect their ability to create a digital special collection. Such factors include the scope of the project, available funding, time constraints, the number of staff who can contribute, the institution’s goals, and user interest.

Some organizations implement a user selection process wherein staff members respond to the needs of the community through an assessment of user needs, allowing users to nominate materials for digitization, or digitization-by-demand requests. In her 2015 article “User Impact on Selection, Digitization, and the Development of Digital Special Collections,” Alexandra Mills writes that “by allowing users to set digitization priorities through request and nomination, institutions are able to collaborate in the selection process, ideally saving time, money, and other valuable resources.”

TRANSFERENCE

Special collections contain a variety of different materials, each of which are digitized using different methods. Methods of digitization are as varied as the material preserved and consideration must be put into the inherent quality of each material. A film cannot be digitized the same way that a book can, and even within each category of material there are important differences. For example, a photograph that is fully developed is preserved in a different manner than its negative on a roll of film.

While large organizations like the United States National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) or the Library of Congress publish suggested standards for how to digitize materials, the actual process varies among each entity.

NARA’s Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Archival Materials for Electronic Access provides instructions for creating a production master file. “The primary objective is to produce digital images that look like the original records (textual, photograph, map, plan, etc.) and are a ‘reasonable reproduction’ without enhancement.” Production master files “should be done in a ‘use-neutral’ manner” so that copies of the file can be manipulated in various ways to serve the needs of different outputs.

IDENTIFICATION

Another critical part of the digitization process is the creation of metadata to describe each item. Metadata not only provides crucial information about the nature of material in question but also the way in which it was digitized. It also prevents artifacts from being lost. NARA’s technical guidelines state that “metadata adds value to production master image files: images without sufficient metadata are at greater risk of being lost.”

Mills writes that “An all-selective model for digitization without adequate metadata is ineffectual, and without selection, valuable digital surrogates may be hiding in plain sight.”

Once an item is identified it can be categorized, duplicated, manipulated, and otherwise used for whatever function an organization needs it to serve.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hirtle, P. B. (2002). The Impact of Digitization on Special Collections in Libraries. Libraries & Culture, 37(1), 42–52.

Mills, A. (2015). User Impact on Selection, Digitization, and the Development of Digital Special Collections. New Review of Academic Librarianship, 21(2), 160–169.

Puglia, S., Reed, J., & Rhodes, E. (2004). Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Archival Materials for Electronic Access: Creation of Production Master Files – Raster Images. U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).