Memory of the World Programme
Memory of the World Programme
Text transcribed from:
DIGITIZING RESEARCH MATERIALS: QUESTIONS TO BE CONSIDERED
by Jutta Reed-Scott, Senior Programme Officer for Collections
and Preservation
American Research Libraries Newsletter 172 January 1994, p. 5
During the past two years, projects for digitizing research materials
have multiplied. Many of these projects have been supported by
grants funds. This article poses some of the questions that reviewers
will typically ask in evaluating proposal applications. The questions
are adapted from preliminary considerations developed by several
federal funding agencies. Working with representatives of the
Coalition for Networked Information, the Commission on Preservation
and Access, and with the advice of other experts, the group developed
a series of technical considerations that could be used by applicants.
They are intended to embody a guiding, not a prescriptive, approach.
Libraries may request the full text of Considerations for Converting
Materials to Electronic Form from Paul Evan Peters, Executive
Director, Coalition for Networked Information (paul@cni.org).
At the request of the ARL Committee on Preservation of Research
Library Materials, the following summary was prepared.
The general elements of a proposal for digitizing research materials
should address an array of specific questions, which are grouped
under the standard elements of a proposal. These include:
1. Significance of Materials
a) What are the intellectual goals of the project and the relevance
of converting the proposed materials to digital form?
b) Who are the potential users of this material?
c) What evidence exists that digitization of the material will
enhance its use?
d) How does the project relate to comparable efforts by others?
2. Technical Plan
a) Are the specified tasks adequate to the objectives and outcomes
of the proposed project?
b) What are the level of staffing and qualifications of the project's
staff? What is the division of labor (including consideration
of collaborative efforts, service bureaus, and other creative
strategies)?
c) What are the hardware/software requirements?
d) How will network connectivity be assured?
e) Does the project follow existing standards or will it adopt
innovative new practices?
3. The Project's Methodology
a) What is the nature of the materials to be digitized? Are they
page-oriented text or materials (including text) that are not
page-oriented (eg., audio, video, films, photographs, and graphic
materials)?
b) How will intellectual access to the digitized materials be
provided (eg., item control; media header; MARC bibliographic
records; document control structures; or other means)?
c) How will the materials be digitized, formatted, and subjected
to quality control? What will be the resolution, black and white,
grey scale, or color; and compression scheme of the scanned page
images?
d) What is the level of image enhancement? ASCII without markup
(keyboarded or processed by optical character recognition software
[OCRed]); text with mark-up (keyboarded or OCRed)?
e) What will be the tagging scheme (eg., the Text Encoding Initiative
[TEI]) or compound documents (Computer-assisted Logistics Systems
[CALS], Open Document Architecture [ODA], Multipurpose Internet
Mail Extensions [MIME], or other)?
f) What criteria will be used to determine the quality of the
digital product (ie., the acceptable levels of resolution, compression,
and image enhancement)?
4. Preservation and Access
a) What are the long-term (life-cycle) management strategies regarding
the digitized materials?
b) How will the preservation and maintenance of the digitized
materials be assured? What are the institutional capabilities
and what institutional commitments have been made to ensure that
the digitized resources will be maintained over time (eg., implementation
plans, monitoring processes, and arrangements with appropriate
entities to store, refresh, maintain, and authenticate the digital
resources)?
c) Is the digital version of the resource intended to replace
or supplement the preservation of the source materials?
d) What will happen to the source materials after a digital version
is available?
e) What authentication and identification strategies are in place
to assure against accidental or intentional changes or replacements?
f) What are potential disaster scenarios and what are the disaster
prevention plans? Will there be backups either digital and/or
analog?
5. Dissemination of Digitized Resources
a) Will the digitized materials be disseminated by magnetic tapes
or diskettes; CD-ROM; network server, operated by the investigator
or by someone else; or other means?
b) What terms and conditions apply to permit dissemination (eg.,
copyright provisions and costs)?
c) What organization or individual controls the rights to reproduce
and disseminate this material? Have the rights to reproduce and
disseminate this material been secured?
d) How will the security, integrity, privacy, and confidentiality
be protected with respect to access to the information.
e) How will any restrictions on access that exist for the original
form be maintained/honored in the digital version of the resource?
f) How will knowledge of and proficiency with the digitized materials
be promoted? Will this include documentation; reference guides
or tip sheets; publications, speeches formal training sessions,
or workshops; support services; posting on listservs or bulletin
boards; or other strategies?
g) How will the technical methods, findings, and results (including
error rates, compression ratios, and costs) be disseminated?
