Practice, organisation and quality control of digitization projects

Abstract

In the previous paper Dennis Schouten discussed the different aspects of preservation microfilming in projects carried out within the scope of Metamorfoze, the Dutch national preservation programme for library materials. I will do the same now for digitisation projects, which are executed within the framework of Metamorfoze. I will focus on the planning, workflow and implementation of Metamorfoze digitisation projects, on quality control and organizational aspects, and will relate these facets to preservation. In 2001 Metamorfoze received a second four year subsidy from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sciences to continue its national programme via its core-business of preservation microfilming. Part of the subsidy was earmarked for a new path, that of digitisation of collections that are already or will be preserved by microfilming also. With this new trajectory the ministry subscribes to the view of the hybrid method which is based on the technical connection between microfilming and scanning, or more generally, the coherence between preservation and digitisation projects: preservation via substitution microfilming and digitisation to increase access. It seems clear that combining the two processes offers considerable financial, organizational, practical and logistic advantages, in contrast to carrying out the two separately. Firstly, one can imagine that a combination saves time and that the knowledge of the structure of the collection and the metadata which is built up during preservation can be very useful in the process of digitisation. Secondly, a choice can be made for a high quality microfilm company which is also specialized in scanning and OCR. To keep both processes within one business, prevents problems such as that the microfilms to be digitised are not optimally suited for scanning. We have realized that there are missed opportunities when the two processes of microfilming and digitisation are carried out separately. Various activities have to be duplicated and because of the missed anticipation to digitisation, occurring errors need to be corrected or even ignored. Thirdly, for a filming and scanning business, building up knowledge of the collection while filming can also be very useful when scanning. Fourthly, when at the start of a project it is known that besides microfilming, also digitisation will be involved, one can plan for digitisation. Already in the microfilming phase the future digitisation has to be taken into account, which can have considerable consequences for specifications for the preservation microfilms - as we have learned from the RLG Guidelines for Microfilming to support Digitization (Dale, 2003) and the paper of Hans van Dormolen yesterday. And last but not least, the physical condition of the collection will gain from a combination of preservation and digitisation. Handling is damaging to collections; in uniting the two processes, handling can be considerably reduced.