Purpose, Policies, and Plans

Summary

Planning: whether you love it or hate it, spending some time in the preparing and planning phase will help you save time in the long run by keeping your projects focused and achievable. A well-planned project also helps you communicate your goals and needs to the stakeholders who support your work. 

This section is about project management—defining goals and purpose, setting or following policies, defining scope, identifying resources, setting a timeline, etc. Regardless of your experience with historic collections, remember that many of these planning steps will be familiar to anyone who has done project management work in another area. 

Goals

Start by setting digital stewardship goals that are relevant to your institution and your community. It might seem self-evident that you should share your digital collections, but without clearly defined goals your projects can quickly become unmanageable. Remember that collection stewardship and digital stewardship do not need to be two separate documents. The goals and many of the policies may be the same for physical and digital collections with only some specific policies or aspects of the project planning being slightly different.

Here are some questions to get you started:

  • Why do you want to create and share digital collections with your community?
  • What existing opportunities for collections do you have?
  • Who might you collaborate with to address the challenges you might face?
  • Do these goals align with your organization’s goals and mission?

Here are some goals that other digital collections practitioners just like you have identified:

  • Preserve and conserve materials
  • Make history accessible
  • Connect and inspire communities
  • Connect past, present, and future generations
  • Promote collections & drive traffic
  • Solicit donations

Purpose Statement

Next, develop a purpose statement that connects and synthesizes your organization’s mission, your community’s needs, and your digital stewardship goals. A purpose statement helps you communicate how your digital stewardship goals align with and support the broader mission of your organization. Here are some examples to get you started:

“The digital materials you find here — images, text, audio, and video — enrich and support the work of Berkeley’s faculty, researchers, students, and staff. Digital Collections stems from the vision of the Digital Lifecycle Program, which serves the Library’s mission to preserve, protect, and provide access to the information it holds. This includes digital collections, archival records, and other materials that provide enduring value for intellectual inquiry, research, and discovery.” (About Digital Collections, UC Berkeley Library, accessed April 8, 2026)

“The UC San Diego Library collects, describes, manages, preserves, and provides access to unique digital resources in support of its mission to support research and learning. This policy addresses the development and management of digital collections for which the UC San Diego Library is the primary custodian. (1.2 Digital Collections Purpose, UC San Diego, accessed April 8, 2026)

“The mission of Fordham University Libraries Digital Collection reflects that of both Fordham University and Fordham University Libraries. The mission of the digital collection is to collect and share Fordham’s resources with the users of the library and wider scholarly community in order to contribute to the global wealth of knowledge.” (About: Mission Statement, Fordham University Libraries Digital Collections, accessed April 8, 2026)

Policies and Procedures

During the planning phase you should identify existing digital collections policies to help guide your work and procedures for describing how that work will be done. You might need to create new policies and procedures if none exist, or you might need to update them if they are outdated. Policies and procedures can be formal or informal. If this process seems daunting, reach out to your trusted neighbor institutions for examples. These documents can/should address:

Digital Collection Development

  • Criteria for inclusion of materials
  • Guidelines for reappraisal and deaccessioning

Digitization

  • Guidelines for identifying and prioritizing what to digitize
  • Workflows and procedures
  • See: Digitization for more detail about this topic

Digital Preservation

  • Guidelines for securely storing digital collections
  • Guidelines for disaster and emergency preparedness
  • See: Digital Preservation for more detail about this topic

Donations and Deeds of Gift

  • Workflows and procedures
    • Many approaches are possible: one is to use a two-step process with a temporary deposit form and a final deed of gift that is itemized.
  • Criteria for acceptance
    • Rely on your digital collection development policy to guide what you will accept. Be transparent about your policies (i.e. post them on your website and share with potential donors).
  • Disposition of physical objects
    • Be ready to offer alternative organizations that might be a better fit for a donation. Identifying partnerships ahead of time is important.

Access and Use

  • Will certain objects or collections have restrictions on access? How will you manage this?
  • How will you identify rights and permissions related to digital collections?
  • How will you address requests for takedowns or changes to metadata?

Project Plan

Now that you have done this foundational work, it’s time to design your project plan. This is your guiding document that lays out the scope of the project, the people involved, the resources required, and the timeline to accomplish it. If you have never developed a project plan before, start by answering these questions:

  • What project will you begin with? Consider starting with a small collection.
  • Who will be involved? Include employees, volunteers, internal stakeholders, external partners and community members.
  • How will you complete the work? What tools, resources, or potential funding will you need? We recommend starting small with the resources you already have.
  • When will you do this work? What’s the timeline? Give yourself more time than you think you’ll need and embrace flexible timelines for your first project. 

You will likely adjust your project plan along the way; that’s to be expected. Use this experience to document what worked, what didn’t, and what you learned for next time. Each project will get easier as your confidence and skills develop.

Suggested Recordings and Readings

Policy Creation Guides, Forms & Worksheets

Discussion Questions

  • What are your digital stewardship goals?
  • Do you have a digital stewardship purpose statement? If you don’t have one yet, have you thought about how to connect your goals with your organization’s mission?
  • Does your organization have any existing digital stewardship policies and procedures? Do you need to create new ones or update existing ones?
  • Have you ever written a project plan before? If you have, what can you share about this process that might help someone else?