In order to transition to large-scale digitization, however, I’d like to re-engineer our approach so that the discovery of these meaningful connections between our primary sources happens AFTER digitization, not before. We hope to shift digitization from these small-scale, project-focused collections to digitization of entire archival collections or entire series, whenever possible.

One issue we’re having with this switch is that the very first step, our current proposal process for selecting and prioritizing digitization projects, was built to support the small-scale, interpretive approach, rather than the large-scale, comprehensive approach. My revision work over the past few weeks has been to transition from our existing project proposal process to what I’ve been calling a collection nomination process. I thought it would be useful to get feedback from Collaboratory readers.

So far the process looks like this:

1. Review university and library strategic goals and determine collection strengths we want to support through digitization on an ongoing basis.
2. Existing collection development groups determine the top priority collections or series to digitize to support those strengths. Nominations can be submitted anytime, but review and prioritization will occur quarterly.
3. Special Collections reading room circulation and duplication requests will be analyzed quarterly and will be evaluated along with the collections nominated by library staff.
4. Priorities will be staged and scheduled for production.

I’ve also been reading Laura Clark Brown’s excellent report, Extending the Reach of Southern Sources: Proceeding to Large-Scale Digitization of Manuscript Collections (PDF, 85pp), which includes an excellent “decision matrix” for prioritizing collections (Appendix G, p. 57), and I hope to develop something similar for prioritizing the nominated collections at Duke.

I hope to launch this new approach at Duke starting in October 2009. Over the course of the 2010 Fiscal Year, our goal is for 75% of digital objects published to be part of large-scale or open-ended collections of diverse formats. Wish us luck!

Then join us for the Collaboratory Happy Hour at Ham’s Restaurant and Brew House on Thursday October 8th at 6:30.  Email me if you have any questions.

To begin this information sharing among NC digital collections programs, we thought it might be best to start with some kind of web-based communication. We thought having a group blog might be a good way to facilitate this info sharing. The group blog will comment on a trackback to posts from existing blogs (like View to Hugh or Duke Digital Collections blog), as well as allow for authoring posts on digital collections issues for sharing and discussion. If we generate enough interest, we could consider some meet-ups, possibly in conjunction with NCLA or SNCA meetings, or even creating a new interest group for these organizations.

If you work in digital collections in North Carolina, or just interested in the subject, please join in the discussion.

Enjoy!