Collaborative Digitization

Description

The Collaborative Digitization Work Group was charged with developing a collaborative model for digitizing and providing access to archives and local historical resources in order to help systems be more efficient and keep them from “reinventing the wheel,” while ensuring that systems and member libraries are working in ways that will allow them to participate in Recollection Wisconsin and the Digital Public Library of America.

This project is currently governed by the Historical and Local Digital Collections Committee.

Updates

At their November 2015 meeting, the WPLC Board approved the Work Group’s recommendation to allocate $9,250 in 2016 to support coordinated training, education, and shared access for cultural heritage digitization projects.

These funds will be used to support the following activities:

  • Development and delivery of a web-based “train-the-trainer” curriculum to enable CE Coordinators or other system-level staff to provide basic digitization education and support to member libraries.
  • Creation and maintenance of a directory of relevant equipment, consulting, internships, and other resources for digitization projects available to public libraries in Wisconsin from academic libraries, library schools, public libraries and systems, cultural heritage institutions, and third-party vendors.
  • Creation of guidelines, templates, and other documentation to assist small/under-resourced libraries in creating and maintaining digital projects and to enhance standardization of digital collections at the statewide level.
  • Information sharing about grants, pointing towards potential collaborative grant applications.
  • A portion of the costs to support a shared access platform maintained by Milwaukee Public Library.

Outcomes

Digital Projects Toolkit online course. This free series of five short courses is designed for CE coordinators and other system-level staff. Topics covered include copyright, scanning, metadata, file storage and digital preservation.

Digital Projects in Wisconsin Google Community

Digitization Vendor List (available to any library on request) and related tip sheet for working with vendors.

Collaborative Digitization Work Group Recommendation (November 2015)

Grant Opportunities for Digitization Projects