Navigating the Point of No Return: Organizational Implications of Digitization in Special Collections

Sutton, Shan

doi:10.1353/pla.2004.0037

Cited by 11 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…He states that no longer should digitization be grant-driven, but simply part of the workflow, and that "collaboration between special collections and digital library units" is necessary for success. 24 Sutton does not, however, discuss the possibility of special collections librarians and archivists collaborating with their users, or even the necessity of understanding user needs as a step in the organizational strategy. The authors suggest that, based on the literature that shows that historians value texts over visual resources, it would enhance the value and relevance of digitization efforts to include users, in this case historians, in decision making and perhaps even workflows such as metadata creation or descriptive tagging.…”

Section: Implications For Libraries and Archivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trends in Image Use by Historians and the Implications for Librarians and Archivists

Harris¹,

Hepburn²

2013

CRL

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For years, libraries have offered reproduction services to users, with historians being the core audience. More recently, archives and special collections have developed digitization programs to make primary sources widely available through the Internet. The authors tracked image use from 2000 through 2009 in journals from the discipline of history to discover whether use of images has increased with the growing availability of digital images through libraries, or from social media sites such as Flickr. The study discusses the results, which show no increase in the inclusion of images in the literature, and the implications for librarians and archivists.

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Section: Implications For Libraries and Archivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trends in Image Use by Historians and the Implications for Librarians and Archivists

Harris¹,

Hepburn²

2013

CRL

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“…Although the first decade of digital library research projects in the U.S. and Europe digitized some content in order to have material with which to test engineering solutions, digitization per se has not been considered scientifically interesting and, until very recently, it has not been conducted on a massive or comprehensive scale. Studies showing that older data have value even for the hard sciences (Liu, 2003) and that the digitization of “cultural heritage” is crucial to its future study (Sutton, 2004) were not sufficient to expand the pace of conversion from analog to digital. But institutional and national pride seem to be.…”

Section: Contentmentioning

confidence: 99%

Digital libraries

Bearman¹

2007

Annual Review Info Sci & Tec

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“…[y] how libraries will organize to provide long-term support for the creation of online resources in special collections is open to question (Sutton, 2004). …”

Section: One Archive and Eight Librariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Albert Einstein archives digitization project: opening hidden treasures

2014

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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present the organizational and technological processes and strategic choices that led to the successful digitization project of the Albert Einstein Archives. Design/methodology/approach – This is a case study of the major challenges that were associated with the project. These include: the integration of the archives in the academic environment; the management of a project of such magnitude within the university organization and between different stakeholders and the technological aspects of the project and user experience. Findings – A digitization project requires not only the archival staff expertise but also information specialists, IT staff, analysts and usually the digitization staff for processing the archival material. Finding the common language between all the professionals involved as well as building a good strategic plan are the keys to a successful project. Research limitations/implications – The planning and implementation of such a project requires a significant budget, manpower project management, hardware, software and intra- and inter-organizational cooperation and coordination. Originality/value – The phenomenon of digitizing unique and exclusive archival data by universities is becoming an innovative contribution of hidden goods to the public at large. This paper offers strategic insights for the planning of similar digitizing projects, particularly in an academic environment.

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Navigating the Point of No Return: Organizational Implications of Digitization in Special Collections

Cited by 11 publications

References 4 publications

Trends in Image Use by Historians and the Implications for Librarians and Archivists

Trends in Image Use by Historians and the Implications for Librarians and Archivists

Digital libraries

The Albert Einstein archives digitization project: opening hidden treasures

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