Digitizing Collections: In house or outsourcing?

1. Planning 
2. Selection
3. Digitizing materials
4. Processing files, creating master and access files
5. Metadata creation or re-purposing
6. Digital preservation of master files
7. Presentation of access files in an online content management platform

Pros & Cons of digitizing in-house or outsourced

In-House

• Develop experience by ‘doing it’
• Retain control over the entire  process 
• Can adjust requirements as you go. 
• Direct participation in development of image collections 

Outsource

• May require large initial and ongoing financial investment
• Project timeline may be longer
• Production capacity is limited
• Staff expertise not always available
• High institution costs.
• Need to enforce standards and best practices

Creating a workspace

• Size of space depends on what you plan to do
• It needs to be secure and safe for your equipment & materials
• It needs to support productivity and image quality
  • Lighting needs to be consistent, typically low or no room light
  • Climate controlled?
  • Audio conversion has special requirements

Imaging workstation

What you need will depend on what you are digitizing. 

• Digital Camera (DSLR), 50mm lens
• Copy stand 
• Lights and light stands
• Book Cradle, weights and other tools to help hold items in place
• Computer workstation
• Photoshop (with Bridge and CameraRaw)
• Hard Drive storage, cloud backup
   
• Flatbed scanner
• Film/Slide scanner

There are also special book scanners, wide format scanners and high end drum scanners

Tips for working with a vendor

• Do a formal proposal (RFI, RFQ, RFP)
• What security do they provide for your objects? Consider visitng the site
• What is their experience with cultural heritage collections?
• What kind of equipment do they use?
• Can they meet your file standards?
• Be clear about who holds ownership of the digital files
• Establish a timeline
• Ask them to do a test
• Be sure to have a signed contract