Digital Scholarship Centre - Digitisation

Material Selection and Preparation

• Researcher identifies and gathers the physical materials to be digitised, such as books, documents, photographs, or artefacts (up to A1).
• Assess the condition of the materials and perform any necessary repairs or stabilisation to ensure they can withstand the digitisation process.
• Organise and catalogue the materials for efficient digitisation.

Copyright and Permissions

• Determine copyright status and obtain necessary permissions to digitise and provide access to copyrighted materials.
• Ensure compliance with intellectual property rights and licensing agreements.

Digitisation Equipment and Setup

• Select appropriate scanning or imaging equipment based on the type and condition of the materials.
• Set up the equipment and configure settings, such as resolution and colour, for optimal digitisation.

Digitisation

• Scan or photograph the materials using the chosen equipment.
• Ensure the highest possible quality and resolution to capture fine details.
• Capture images in standard formats like PDF, TIFF or JPEG.

Quality Control

• Review the digitised images to ensure they meet established quality standards.
• Check for image clarity, colour accuracy, and completeness.
• Retake images or adjust as needed.

OCR (Optical Character Recognition)

• If applicable, perform OCR to convert text within scanned documents into machine-readable and searchable text.

Metadata Creation

• Create descriptive metadata for each digitised item, including title, author, date, subject, and other relevant information.
• Create technical metadata, such as file format and resolution.

Storage and Backup

• Store digitised materials in a secure and redundant storage system to prevent data loss.