Starting a Digitization Program: the FDU Experience

Brigid BurkeTechnical Services & Digital Projects Librarian

Fairleigh Dickinson University

300,000 Books 500 Maps Special collections:

◦ 5,000 items in Madison Archives (not including Sammartino Archives)

◦ 7,000 items in Hackensack Archives

No organized digital projects Canon scanner and Photoshop No server for digital projects No budget for digital projects No staff (except for me)

Money, money, money Who is interested in our collections? In house or outsource? Where are we going to put it?

Small projects can be done in house:◦ 100 pages of text, 100 images, or less◦ Text, photo, or audio sources◦ Size of text/photos cannot be greater than 8 ½” x

11”

Larger projects require grant funding

• Talk to University Advancement office—deal with privately funded grants, alumni donations.

• Talk to Alumni Association, Friends of the Library, other interested groups.

• Find out what archival materials are being requested from Reference and Archives staff.

• Think about the history of your library, your materials, your university or town.

• Keep it small, focused, and measurable• Read the grant guidelines carefully• Look at samples of grants from previous

recipients• Basic parts of a grant:– State your objective clearly– State why it’s important– Provide a reasonable budget– Provide a mechanism for determining if you’ve

met your objective

The FDU Library opted to purchase Content dm software, licensing, and hosting from OCLC.

Other options: In-house only database Your university (or library or municipality)’s

web server Purchase web server space Cloud computing services

A scanner A program for editing scanned images Software for converting podcasts or other

sound files to MP3s PDF creator and editor Computer storage space

Start with small projects Simple metadata (DC is easiest and most

flexible) Finish one project before starting another Test project? Look to current digitization articles and best

practices sites for guidance

Picasa3 (Photos) : http://picasa.google.com/ Picnik (Photos) : http://www.picnik.com/ Audacity (Sound Files) :

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ Switch Sound File Converter (Sound Files) :

http://www.nch.com.au/switch/ CT Developing (PDF creation/editing) :

http://www.ctdeveloping.com/ctdeveloping/products/pdftypewriter_info.asp

Dspace, Greenstone, ePrints (Repository software) :

http://www.dspace.org/http://www.greenstone.org/http://www.eprints.org/

WordPress (interface and hosting options)http://wordpress.org/

Penn State : http://www.libraries.psu.edu/psul/digipres/bestpractices.html#internet

Washington State Library: http://digitalwa.statelib.wa.gov/newsite/projectmgmt/index.htm

LYRASIS Mass Digitization Collaborative (ends January 2011) http://www.lyrasis.org/Products-and-Services/Digital-Services/Mass-Digitization-Collaborative.aspx

NJ Digital Highway http://www.njdigitalhighway.org

DASH (eBrary) http://www.ebrary.com/kb/librarian/dash.jsp