Phase I: Pre-production
Do you have an idea for a digital project? Submit a proposal using our online form. DLS staff members will respond as soon as possible.
Once a proposal has been submitted, DLS staff may set up a meeting with you to talk about the project and assess the materials being digitized. It is during this project assessment meeting that DLS will begin to gather the necessary information to determine such things as staffing resource needs, content delivery options, metadata description levels, potential copyright concerns, and project workflows and timelines.
After the meeting, the information gathered will be used as the basis for a written Project Plan that outlines the project scope, target dates, workflows, project participants and their respective roles and responsibilities. Once the terms of the plan have been agreed upon by the content provider and DLS, the project moves into production.
Phase II: Production
Production work may be handled by UI Libraries, by the content provider's unit (with DLS training), or outsourced to a third-party vendor. UI Libraries is equipped to reformat photographic prints, text, and some types of sound recordings. The digitization of other formats (eg. slides, negatives, moving images, etc.) or high-volume projects may need to be outsourced.
If the materials to be digitized are brittle, need to be disbounded, or have other conservation concerns, DLS will work with the content provider to route the materials to the UI Libraries Preservation unit.
DLS determines reformatting and metadata specifications based on national best practices set forth by the Collaborative Digitization Program (CDP). See CDP's best practices for more information.
DLS will work with the content provider to create a collection home page that serves as a 'front door' to accessing the collection. See the DLS guidelines for web design for details about content and design parameters.
Prior to the public launch of a collection, DLS staff (in consultation with the content provider) will perform a final review of
the images and accompanying metadata to check for quality, accuracy, and consistency. Then the collection will be publicly released.
Phase III: Post-Production
Once the publication has launched, content providers are asked to provide suggestions about who and how (listservs, online research communities, etc.) to promote the collection. This way, those with interest and expertise can use, apply, and build upon what has been created. The UI Libraries Public Relations unit will aid in distributing a press release and other related collection promotion.
After the public launch, DLS will contact the content provider for a post-launch discussion to evaluate the process and the effectiveness of the collection. DLS analyses statistics on collection use and will provide aggregate information to content providers as requested. Collection updates are sometimes necessary and can be worked out with DLS staff.
Credit: This document was developed using resources from the University of Wisconsin Digital Collection Center, the Collaborative Digitization Program, and Cornell University's Moving Theory Into Practice Tutorial . |
