Digitization

Summary

Digitization is the process of making digital copies (surrogates) of physical or analog items. It is one of several ways to gather items for your digital collections. (See: Gathering and Collecting.)

Digitization Standards

Each organization has its own digitization requirements and standards that vary according to content type, access needs, and storage capacity. Most institutional standards are adapted from the FADGI (Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative) Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Cultural Heritage Materials: Third Edition. 2023. Example of standards adapted from FADGI include:

Planning Your Digitization Project

When planning your digitization project, start by reviewing your organization’s digitization policy, which should be based on your digital collections purpose statement and aligned with your organization’s strategic direction and objectives. (See: Purpose, Policies, and Plans.) Your digital policy articulates your digitization priorities, which helps you identify the projects that align with those priorities. But how do you know which of several potential projects to pursue? The answer often comes down to what you can reasonably achieve with the resources you have. Consider the following questions:

  • Do you have the appropriate equipment, staff, time, and knowledge/training for the collection you want to digitize? 
  • Do you have opportunities to outsource some or all of the work? 
  • Is additional funding available? (See: Grants and Funding)
  • Can you borrow equipment that you might not need long-term? For example, both Colorado and Wyoming have Digitization Kits that organizations can borrow. Or you might partner with another organization to borrow or use their equipment.

Who Will Do the Work?

Digitization can be done in-house, in collaboration with a partner organization, or outsourced to a vendor. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. For instance, you may not have the expertise or equipment to digitize reel-to-reel tapes, but you could secure funding to outsource that work to a vendor. The tradeoff is that you will need to perform quality control checks on the digitized content and follow up on any contractual obligations.

In-house digitization allows you to have more control over the process, but it is very time- and resource-intensive. It is not practical to digitize every item in your collection at once, so you will need to prioritize your work carefully. We suggest starting with a small collection and digitizing only those items that meet the goals of the project as well as minimum quality standards.

You might also choose to collaborate with a partner organization, which could mean anything from borrowing equipment to hosting or archiving digital content. Any partnership should include clear communication about roles, outcomes, and timelines; ideally, you should create an MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) to document these expectations.

Digitization Workflow

The digitization workflow is a multi-step process that is a little (or a lot) different at every organization. In general, the steps are:

  • Prepare. In this phase, you will organize the items to be digitized, create a tracking system to document progress and issues, identify and configure the equipment and software needed, and set up your workspace.
  • Create digital surrogates. This includes scanning, photographing, recording, or otherwise capturing a digital representation of the item. The output of this process should include full-size files for archiving and smaller files for providing access through a Content Management System (CMS). You may also choose to output other file sizes, for instance, thumbnails.
  • Perform quality control checks. This phase involves reviewing the digital surrogates for accuracy and completeness, and identifying any items that need to be redone.
  • Document. Along the way, be sure to update the tracking system you set up in the Prepare phase. 
  • Name. Use a standardized naming convention for files and folders so that they are easy to search, sort, and identify based on their name. Find tips and examples of naming conventions at:
  • Save files to an appropriate place according to their type (archival, access, thumbnail, etc.).

Suggested Recordings, Readings and Policy Creation Guides

Discussion Questions

  • Does your organization have a digitization policy? If so, what’s included in it?
  • Who is involved in your digitization workflow? How do you manage your workflow across multiple people? How do you onboard or train new people?
  • Many new CVL Collections partners are surprised to learn that there is a difference between archival formats (like TIFF) and access formats (like JPG and PNG). Is this concept new to you as well?
  • If you have already started doing in-house digitization, what was that learning curve like?
  • Do you have a dedicated digitization space? What type of equipment do you have?
  • Did this module cause you to rethink your overall strategy (in-house vs. partner collab vs. vendor)?
  • Editing is meant to match the original, not improve it. Did that surprise you? Are there times when an enhanced or cleaned up version is appropriate? (For example, as an access copy.)