Learning Lessons from Other Digitisation Projects

Last updated: 14 November 2008
Published in: Managing a project | Digitising analogue media
Tags: analogue collections | case studies | digital collections | digital preservation | digitisation

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Summary

This document proposes a number of potential challenges associated with the digitisation of a collection. It then examines the value of lessons learned from previous projects when attempting to meet those challenges. It is intended to be of use to resource management staff considering the digitisation of all or part of their collection.

Introduction

When planning a digitisation project it's important to avoid the extremes of thinking that either (a) your project is so unique there is nothing to be learned from previous projects, or (b) so many projects have gone on that there must by now be an easy-to-use template you can apply. The truth lies between these extremes: there is a lot to be learned from other projects, but their lessons must be evaluated against the particular characteristics and context of your project and applied and adapted as appropriate.

This paper provides a selection of lessons that have emerged from various digitisation projects. The list does not claim to be exhaustive, but should provide some insight into issues commonly encountered by digitisation projects and the staff who work on them. Note that the list here is generic; drawn from many digitisation projects. You may also find it useful to look at individual projects and the particular lessons they learned. Published case studies provide a very useful way to do this, and JISC Digital Media and others have made several available online:

• JISC Digital Media case studies
• AHDS case studies
• JISC Digitisation Programme

In addition to published case studies, it can also often be useful to talk directly to those involved in projects. They may tell you additional things that they would be reluctant to commit to print. One way to find projects is to send messages to mailing lists, such as:

• JISC Digital Media list
• Association of Moving Image Archivists list
• International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives list

Project planning and management

• Do your homework before launching into the project – it's vital to carefully assess both your users' needs and your available resources
• Make sure you have sufficient institutional backing: ensure that the key stakeholders are on your side and that your project is a good fit with your institution's mission and strategic aims
• Be sure to involve those with knowledge of the collection as well as those with a technical knowledge of digitisation
• Set clear and achievable objectives and get them down on paper to avoid being diverted or pushed into doing other things ('scope creep')
• The use of professional project management techniques (e.g. PRINCE2) will help to keep things on track
• It is important to undertake a risk assessment to help you in monitoring and managing your project's risks
• Don't underestimate the time required to recruit and train staff, or presume that your staff will stay till the very end of your project

Working in collaboration with others

• Collaboration with other departments or institutions can be beneficial to all concerned, but it will require careful management
• Meetings are particularly important at the beginning of the project to determine common objectives and methodologies and establish strong working relationships
• You must be very clear about financial arrangements and the ownership of Intellectual Property Rights (IPR)
• Frequent meetings and good channels of communication throughout the project will help the collaboration to run smoothly

Procurement and outsourcing

• Make sure you allow plenty of time to procure products or services, especially if you have to undertake procurement via OJEU (Official Journal of the European Communities)
• Where you are outsourcing work you must still have sufficient grasp of the technical details and standards to ensure that you get what you need
• Be absolutely clear about what the price covers and how it breaks down – you need to ensure that everything you require is included and you may discover some elements of the work that you could more cheaply undertake yourself
• When outsourcing, make sure you put in place proper agreements with agreed timescales and penalty clauses, quality assurance standards and procedures, and reporting requirements
• Be very clear about who owns the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) for any work being undertaken by an outside organisation – ensure you are given an appropriate licence or assignment of rights

Involving your users

• Identify your users and their needs – you may find it useful to make a distinction between core users/needs and more peripheral users/needs so you can establish some prioritisation
• Involve your core users in all stages of the project: planning, development and delivery – you could include them in an advisory group or involve them in the testing of your collection and its interface
• Once the collection is released make sure you provide opportunities for your users to give feedback
• If you're digitising resources that may be unfamiliar to some users (e.g. sound or moving image resources), it will be useful to provide guidance on how they can make use of that material

Selection of material for digitisation

• You will need to decide at the beginning of the project whether you will undertake a selection process and what criteria you'll employ
• In addition to user needs, copyright status and the condition of the original material are likely to be important factors affecting your selection

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) and other legal issues

• Identify the copyright status of your collection as early as possible, since clearing rights can prove time-consuming and expensive
• Make sure you're clear about institutional policies and practices (e.g. does your institution claim copyright in academic's work; does it have an insurance policy that could cover you for material you're unable to clear?)
• Bear in mind that there may be other IPR issues to consider than just copyright (e.g. moral rights or performer's rights), and other legal considerations (e.g. data protection)
• If you're licensing content from rights owners make sure you're realistic about any protection you promise – you can put measures in place to minimise copying, but cannot absolutely guarantee that no one will misuse your digital collection

Quality assurance (QA) and evaluation

• Establish clear and well-documented quality assurance procedures, using automated and objective measures where possible
• Try to be realistic in establishing acceptance criteria – for many things you will want to establish very high standards; but for others it would be unreasonable to expect 100% accuracy
• Make sure you allow adequate time to undertake the QA and any corrective work that might be required
• When delivering the collection, try to provide a mechanism for your users to alert you to any errors they spot in the digital content or metadata, and to provide you with evaluative feedback
• Build evaluation into your project: both formative evaluation (i.e. as you go along, to inform the project's development) and summative evaluation (at the end, to capture some of those lessons you've learned)

Digital capture

• When estimating capture timings, do not make your calculations on the basis that someone will be able to digitise 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks...
• Ensure that all your equipment is kept in good working order and is fit for the task – it may be worthwhile spending a bit more if this will provide better efficiency
• Where possible, use an automated means of managing quality and consistency (e.g. prefer objective colour/sound calibration to the subjectivity of judging things by eye or ear)
• It's important to give some thought to the digitisation environment: make sure you consider ergonomics, space and lighting
• Identify any special handling requirements for the original materials and put in place appropriate guidelines and training
• Be aware that digitisation can reveal 'noise' (e.g. dirt or scratches) that was not previously apparent in analogue versions
• Agree on systems for unique identification and file naming before you begin digitisation

Metadata creation

• When estimating cataloguing/indexing timings, do not make your calculations on the basis that someone will be able to catalogue 7 hours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks...
• Metadata creation can be very time-consuming: it will usually take longer than the time required to capture and edit the digital content – especially if you're indexing sound or moving image files
• Define your metadata schema and vocabularies at the beginning of the project considering, particularly, the needs of your users and the way you want your collection to be searched and displayed
• Take care in adapting formal metadata standards, making sure you balance your user's needs against any interoperability requirements (i.e. the need for your collection to be integrated with, or searched alongside, other collections)
• Make sure you agree on any special metadata requirements with external suppliers

Collection delivery

• Give thought to your digital management system and end-user interface at the beginning, since these may affect some of the decisions you make about digitisation and metadata creation
• However, try not to let your management system/interface be too constraining on the quality of your digital content and metadata, since your content/metadata will need to outlive any current management system
• Make sure you involve your users in the design and testing of your interface
• Make sure you identify and address issues of usability and accessibility – consider offering suitable alternatives (e.g. textual descriptions of visual resources, transcription of voice recordings, synopses of videos)
• Give some thought to how you will promote your collection: it might be useful to develop a 'brand', have an advertising strategy, or open up your content for discovery by search engines or other search services (e.g. via the Z39.50 or OAI-PMH protocols)

Preservation and sustainability

• Give thought to the preservation and sustainability during your project planning – make sure you ask the "what if..." questions and have consulted or involved all the key people (e.g. those who will have to manage your file storage or upgrade your software)
• Put in place a strategy for preservation, identifying how often your collection should be backed-up, checked, or migrated
• Make sure your project is fully documented so that those coming along afterward can understand every aspect of the collection (e.g. digitisation standards, copyright status, system architecture)

Conclusion

The things you learn while undertaking your own project will be useful for those who follow. So while you're undertaking the project, it can be useful to maintain a "lessons learned log". Consider writing these up more formally once the project is finished, perhaps in a final report for project funders/sponsors or, if you can, as a public case study. It's important to remember that the lessons you learn are not just the things that went wrong – but also the solutions you tried and the aspects of the project that went very well!

Last updated: 14 November 2008
Published in: Managing a project | Digitising analogue media
Tags: analogue collections | case studies | digital collections | digital preservation | digitisation

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