Practice, organization and quality control
of digitization projects
Henriette Reerink
Project coordinator Digitization
Metamorfoze
National Preservation Programme for Library Materials
Preservation and digitization
1997-2000 subsidy € 8 preservation microfilming
deacidification
research
publicity
2001-2004 subsidy € 10 idem
&
digitization for access
Preservation and digitization
Technical coherence between microfilming
and scanning
Advantages of combining microfilming
and digitization
Financial
Organizational
Practical
Logistic
Preservation and digitization
Substitution microfilming:
To make authentic surrogate copies of the source
material for the long term.
“Substitution” digitization:
Digital images cannot yet give a measurable and
retraceable representation of the source material.
Standardization for this, however, is evolving.
The long term durability of digital images cannot
yet be assured.
To increase access.
Metamorfoze criteria for digitization
Preservation via substitution microfilming
Importance of the collection
Frequency of use
Target group of users
Physical state of the collection
Infrastructure
Memory of the Netherlands
A cross-sectoral national digitization programme
for museums, libraries, documentation centres
and archives
A multimedia database on the Internet, which
gives access to information on many aspects of
Dutch culture and history
Focuses on a general public, as well as on
scholars, secondary school pupils and teachers
Memory of the Netherlands
Infrastructure
Storage of scans and metadata
Retrieval of scans and metadata
Presentation of scans and metadata
Quality demands scanning
Long term preservation?
Keeping and maintenance of scans and
metadata in the (near) future
Project organization
Project leader
Cataloguer with database experience
Quality manager of the Memory of the
Netherlands
Programmers of the Memory of the
Netherlands
Project coordinator Metamorfoze
IT Deparment to keep and maintain the
collection when the project is finished
Metamorfoze digi projects
Manuscript collections: Theatre songs
Musical scores
Album amicorum
Archival collection
Printed books: Children’s books
Illegal brochures and pamphlets
Newspapers: 1910-1930
Periodicals: De Gracieuse
De Gracieuse
De Gracieuse
Outline of digitization projects
1. Preliminary phase
2. Metadata
3. Digitization
4. Presentation
5. Final report and evaluation
1. Preliminary phase
Selection
Material analysis (types, numbers, sizes)
Copyright research
Request for a quotation
Judging offers and test results
Project proposal, estimate and planning
Request for a quotation
One company
Test:
Technical specifications (quality demands)
Filenames
(OCR)
Storage costs
Planning
Back-up
Treatment of the collection & insurance
2. Metadata
Metadata research
Creating / complementing / correcting
metadata
Writing conversion scripts for metadata
Selecting dump from database
Metadata control after conversion
Correcting conversion errors
3. Digitization
Making of intermediaries
Digitization (and OCR)
Quality control of digital images, filenames
(and OCR)
4. Presentation: development site
Specifications for the site
Writing and editing introductory texts
Technical development of the site
Making testplan
Testing site
Adapting site following test results
English translation of the texts
5. Evaluation
Evaluation
Financial end report
Costs digitization
Digitizing 30%
Metadata 30%
Management 30%
Overhead 10%
Costs preservation microfilming
Microfilming 50%
Organizing the collection 20%
Management 20%
Overhead 10%
Costs of combination
Microfilming and digitization 40%
Organizing the collection (incl. metadata)
25%
Management 25%
Overhead 10%
Planned Metamorfoze research
The state of the art of combining microfilming
and digitization
Survey of combined projects
(Im)possibilities of COM and hybrid camera’s
Examination of standards for scanning from film
Scan targets for creating sound surrogate copies
Scanning from positive and negative greyscale films