Managing a
Digitisation Project
Joanne Lomax Smith
http://heds.herts.ac.uk
Elements of a Digitisation Project Assessment and Selection
Proposal writing and fundraising
Feasibility testing, costing, piloting
copyright clearance and rights
management
Metadata design and creation
Preparation of material
Benchmarking
Digital Capture
Quality assessment
Delivery
Digitisation Project Life-Cycle
1 Assessment of the need for
digitisation
2 Selection of materials
3 Deciding what you want to achieve
from the information content of the
originals
4 Deciding how you are going to reach
the end product
5 Finding the funds for the project
6 Planning the project and assigning
resources
Digitisation Project Life-Cycle
7 Preparing the originals for digitisation
8 Conversion
9 Quality assurance checks to ensure
the output conforms to specification
10 Return originals to their place in the
collection
11 Mount data
12 Make provision for archiving and
preserving the data
Project Planning is about 3
Project Planning
things:
Vision - can you see the
whole picture?
Risk Management - ensuring
the vision is achievable
Resource Management -
putting the vision into practise
Vision:
Describe the complete project
Project Planning
Understand how the elements fit
together
Be holistic - think about the
lifecycle
Do not need to understand every
technical element
Be able to define solid objectives,
goals and deliverables
Risk & Resource Management
Employ a good project manager
Project Planning
Empower the right people
Ensure good communications
Invest in training, take advice
Define your acceptance criteria and assign
ranking
Ensure early delivery of equipment
Have a quality plan
Be honest about potential problems and risk
of failure
3 main skill sets:
Management Skills
Technical Skills
Skills
Subject Skills
Skills are interwoven and
overlapping
Transferable skills essential
There is a skills shortage
search for aptitude and lateral experience
“At some point the Internet has to stop
looking like the world’s largest
rummage sale. For taming this
particular frontier the right people are
librarians, not cowboys…
Skills
The Internet is made of information and
nobody knows more about how to
order information than librarians”
Rennie, John. Civilising the Internet.
Scientific American, March 1997, p6.
Costs are usually people driven:
More human intervention in any
digitisation process means higher costs
Staff costs and overheads are often
Costs
hidden when working in-house
Digitisation can eat up your budget
unless you have done good estimating
System development and delivery
mechanisms can easily overrun and eat
the rest of your budget
everything you do will be driven
by people
Golden Rules? Effective time
management
Be flexible
Plan - Panic - Resolve
Learn from mistakes -
don’t repeat them
Be honest
heds@herts.ac.uk
http://heds.herts.ac.uk