We see digitisation as a form of project management, and any managed project needs to have at least three core things – costs, risks, and benefits. It’s important to think about the benefits that a digitisation programme will bring, and not just to you as a collection manager, but to your users, and to your organisation. Sometimes these benefits can be overlooked, or not considered and assessed in detail. In this post we’ll pick out some of the possible benefits digitisation can bring.
Saves originals
Archivists and librarians will recognise the scenario – there’s a precious irreplaceable resource, or one that is fragile (the paper may be crumbling), or it’s the only available copy in the country. What’s more it’s in constant demand, so subjected to frequent handling every time it’s retrieved from the stacks by the staff, then further handling in the searchroom. These precious documents and books don’t like being out in the light too often. Digitisation eliminates all the above risks and provides what, in the old analogue world, would have been called a “surrogate” copy.
Main beneficiaries: archivists, librarians
Meets user needs
This may seem obvious, but it’s still surprising how some digitisation projects still start and end with the collection manager’s decision, and don’t take the audience of users into account. There ought to be a formal process of assessing user needs at the start of a project, and the application of metrics to determine whether user needs have actually been met. This doesn’t always happen; digitisation decisions can be driven instead by internal staff meetings, advisory boards, or the recommendations of external consultants.
It might be more beneficial to consider user-centric methods and approaches like focus groups, customer surveys, online questionnaires, and statistics on searchroom use. A successful digitisation project aimed directly at satisfying a real user need can reap visible dividends for the organisation, in terms of visits, web page hits, raised profile, user satisfaction, and user engagement.
Main beneficiaries: users, the institution
Improves or enhances access
This is surely one of the main benefits of digitising any resource. If planned and executed correctly it can result in a string of related benefits for you and your organisation. Increased access through the web, reaching more users, and increasing not just the numbers but the diversity of your audience. But it’s not enough to just throw an existing image collection on the web in a gallery browser and let the power of the internet do the rest.
Collection managers should take the opportunity to rethink the potential of the resources, listen to user needs, and use technology to provide more imaginative ways to recast and enhance access to the content. There are possibilities for discovery metadata as well as cataloguing metadata, for navigational links that allow many entry points to a collection instead of a traditional hierarchical catalogue, and plug-in tools that can deliver popular and attractive ways to serve the content to users.
One of the most prominent of these is the page-turner and zoom tool device, so common with online books. These things are not merely gimmicks to be used for their own sake, but can offer your users more direct engagement with your collections. And we haven’t even mentioned crowd-sourcing yet…
Main beneficiaries: users, researchers
Saves space
This scenario is a bit of an outlier, and it’s primarily more of a records management/organisational change story (although other information management professionals may consider it too). The common motivator here is that the office is running out of space and that it would be convenient to scan all the current papers into digital form, and start “working digitally”. Managers who have this bright idea can immediately see a cost saving in terms of storage space, with visions of now-empty filing cabinets being removed from costly office space.
True, space saving can be a massive benefit – but people still have to find the materials. A project like this has to be managed very carefully and with a lot of preparation, especially giving due attention to metadata, which doesn’t automatically appear from nowhere when you take folders out of an organised filing system. And scanning is not cost-neutral either. Even so, if you can do this right, you’ll be contributing a genuine improvement to current working practice, and you will save money and space.
Main beneficiaries: staff, organisation, managers
A step towards digital preservation
The gain here is that the digitisation process can seriously lengthen the life of your valuable resources. Through digitisation, you could begin the process of long-term digital preservation. The scenario would be that you continue to keep the original analogue materials, but also keep the digitised version you have created; after all, it has cost you a lot of money to create it (staff time, server space), and its ongoing value to the organisation is already being demonstrated.
Treat the digitised resource with as much care and respect as you would your archival originals, and you’re on the road to digital preservation. As part of the project planning you would want to factor in the long-term preservation goal, before you even lift the lid of the scanner.
Main beneficiaries: archivist, institution
These are just five of the many benefits that a well-managed digitisation project can bring. Other topics would include income generation, pro-active user engagement, and attracting new customers to your offering. Understanding benefits (along with the costs of risks) is a positive way of understanding the digitisation task and delivering the project successfully.