Moving Theory into Practice: Digital Imaging for Libraries and Archives

Abstract

Digital imaging has greatly enhanced how libraries and archives achieve their stated goals, whether it is for public or higher education. The double-barreled benefit of increased access to rare, fragile or special collections via the internet, and reduced handling of such collections by using electronic surrogates, has proven too alluring for most institutions to resist. The interest in digital imaging has been fueled by funding from both private and public funds that have been increasingly available over the past 5 years for digital library projects. The Library of Congress/ Ameritech National Digital Library Competition awarded grants from 1996-99, and did an excellent job of introducing many libraries and archives into the intricacies of digital conversion. Along with the CLIR-supported Digital Library Federation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has also been active in supporting and encouraging cooperative projects in the field. More recently, both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities have awarded digital conversion grants, and the National Science Foundation has partnered with the Library of Congress to encourage initiatives using digital libraries as a platform for research. So, clearly, the momentum is there to begin production-scale digital conversion. But there are many difficult decisions that have to be made along the road to establishing a successful digital library program. Once institutions get involved with digital capture, they find it can be a complex and daunting process. Crucial decisions have to be made in selection, benchmarking, quality control, metadata schema, systems infrastructure, web site design, and digital preservation. These determinations often require a re-thinking and re-tooling of many areas of a library's established mode of operation, including cataloging, conservation and preservation, copyrights and permissions, systems infrastructure, and personnel.