Digital Asset Management

Digital Asset Management

Collection Selection

Audience

Traditionally, analog collections have been built for the convenience or the interests of the owner of the collection.  However, in planning the digitization of a collection, the perspective of the end-user is critical.  “Who will want to use this collection?  How will users search this collection?” are essential questions that you will need to address early on in the planning process.  Your unintended audience might even be wider than the one that you anticipate, and the better you can provide for the users of your project, the more effective it will be.

Scope

In defining the scope of the project, consider a realistic, manageable number of images. Each image collection should be culled for duplicates, undesirable images of poor quality or inappropriate content, etc.

In some instances, even though you have a number of pictures that you wish to scan, acquiring them through license or purchase may be a more efficient approach to developing digital resources than digitizing a collection personally. The College Library acquires substantial visual resources, for example, and other licensing and vendor options provide alternatives to “doing it yourself.”  IT can provide advice and refer you to library staff who are knowledgeable about Library resources.

Budget

When creating a budget for a digitization project you will need to consider a number of factors.  There are costs associated with digitization that are not obvious, such as the purchase of an image, staff time in scanning, editing and asset management, file storage space, hardware and software.  These costs are often spread out among a number of different departments.  Staff members in Information Technology can assist you in developing the budget.  It is clear from the data gathered from several pilot projects that it is less expensive overall to purchase rather than scan an image.

Budget Standards

  • Purchase of images – approximately $7.00 per image depending upon vendor
  • Hardware and software – contact IT
  • File storage – contact IT
  • Staff time – when digitizing an image you should plan on 20 minutes per image to scan, edit, and manage.  If you are not experienced at scanning or image editing, you should budget for 30 minutes per image.

Intended use of images

How your digitized images will be used is crucial to the planning process.  Consider uses over the long term, since the digitization specifications that you choose will eventually define the optimal output quality of your images.   

Commercial printing, printing with a laser or ink jet printer, Web display, projection, zooming and cropping all require choices about color, resolution, bit depth, and file type.  By anticipating the intended end-use before the image is digitized, it is possible to choose specifications that will result in satisfactory image quality without squandering resources such as time and network storage.

Quality Control

Quality control is one of the most critical aspects of any digitization process and in fact applies throughout the life of an image. Workflows need to be identified and established to ensure consistency in image capture (scanning, digital photography, purchase of images), metadata and controlled vocabularies, and image editing. 

According to the Getty’s Introduction to Imaging, “Consistent image-capture guidelines and parameters should be established, and scans must be periodically reviewed and checked for accuracy, ideally against the source material, whether they are produced in-house or supplied by a vendor. Although automatic scanning is generally consistent, problems with exposure, alignment, and color balance occur often enough to require a quality-control component in any scanning program. Without quality control, it will not be possible to guarantee the integrity and consistency of the resulting digital image files… Records need to be proofread and mechanisms such as controlled vocabularies utilized to ensure consistent data entry. Additionally, relationships between cataloguing records and image files need to be verified and/or developed.  Quality control must also be applied to all access files derived from master images and to all preservation copies made, on whatever media, as mistakes and technical errors can often be introduced during the process of duplication or migration. Files should be checked to ensure that all are correctly named, not corrupted, and so on.”

Quality control must also be applied to all access files derived from master images and to all preservation copies made, on whatever media, as mistakes and technical errors can often be introduced during the process of duplication or migration. Files should be checked to ensure that all are correctly named, not corrupted, and so on.”