General

Digital repositories for small memory institutions

General description:

During this course you will learn how to organize and perform digitisation activities in a small memory institution e.g. public library or local museum.

This course shows how to digitise cultural heritage objects, how to prepare them for on-line presentation and how to describe them with metadata. Besides necessary theoretical background, the course includes also practical instructions which will enable small institutions to create high quality digital content and make it available to services like Europeana.

Course structure:

The course is divided into 9 topics listed below. These topics are divided into 25 lessons (), supported with few additional resources (). Each topic ends with a quiz () allowing you to check you knowledge.

Requirements:

Participants of this course, besides of knowledge required to handle cultural heritage objects they want to digitise, should have basic computer skills and knowledge about Internet.

About Access It Plus project

ACCESSIT PLUS CSSU

Tema actual

Tema 1

Introduction to digitisation

This topic outlines basic concepts associated with the process of digitisation of the cultural heritage.

In this part you will learn why digitisation is so important and what is the role of small memory institution in the process of the digital preservation. Basic digitisation workflows will also be presented to give you an idea of what should be done in order to create and publish the digital version of the cultural heritage objects on the Internet.

Tema 2

Digitisation equipment and software

In this topic you will see what kind of equipment is necessary to digitise various types of the cultural objects. You will also learn what kind of software may be useful for digital processing such objects.

In the first lesson you will learn about the basic digitisation equipment, e.g. scanners; digital cameras will also be reviewed. Results of scanning may require an additional treatment in order to obtain the best quality of presentation and retrieval. You will also learn what kind of software may be useful for image, text and audio/video manipulation. In the last lesson you will learn when is it worth creating your own digitisation lab, as in some cases it is reasonable to rely on the external (commercial) digitisation providers, which have all necessary equipment and experience.

Tema 3

Digital libraries basics

This topic introduces some basic knowledge about digital libraries.

In the first lesson you will learn about the basic concepts associated with digital libraries. Further you will analyse the case study of digital libraries infrastructure in Poland to see what role can play a single digital library in the local, regional and national context. This will also include a few organizational models which may be employed as a foundation of the digital library. Having this knowledge, you will face the question "is it worth building your own digital library?" If in your case the answer will be "yes", you will be able to find out what is necessary to do.

Tema 4

Building digital collections

This topic covers a range of issues associated with the selection of objects for the digitisation, publishing on-line and creation of the digital collections.

First lesson is intended to explain what are the features of a good digital collection and how a user can achieve them. Among a number of issues which have to be taken into consideration in this context, one of the most important is related to the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR). Therefore, second lesson presents the most important concepts and problems of IPR.

Tema 5

Preparing digital versions of the cultural heritage objects

This topic describes the most important aspects of the process of the preparation of digital versions of the cultural heritage objects.

During the first four lessons you will learn what equipment should be used for different types of the resources. Some practical solutions, useful while preparing digital versions of photographs/drawings/posters (image based objects) and book/press article/document (textual content), will be introduced. You will also learn how to prepare a web delivery version of audio/video recordings, and 3D objects like sculptures. The last part of this module describes a concept of the Digital Master Copy and explains why is it so important for the digital preservation.

Tema 6

Describing digital objects

This topic introduces the concept of metadata. It shows why metadata is important, how metadata can be divided and what should be considered when creating it.

First lesson explains why metadata is so important, explains the role of different types of metadata and briefly introduces metadata schemas most widely used in different domains. Next two lessons are focused on descriptive metadata with focus on discovery, interpretation and reuse of digital cultural heritage. The second lesson presents some examples and good practices useful for creation of descriptive metadata. The last part of this topic is focused on the Dublin Core Terms - probably the most popular standard related to descriptive metadata.

Tema 7

Publishing objects on-line

In this topic you will learn about a number of issues associated with publication of cultural heritage objects in the Internet.

The first lesson explains how different digital library software platforms are dealing with the process of digital object on-line publication. In the next lesson you will get insight into a range of issues associated with digital objects promotion. Such activities are crucial in order to attract end-users to digital library, especially in case of small memory institutions. Last part is a kind of a checklist of things which should be remembered before and after the publication.

Tema 8

Digital library evaluation and monitoring

This module will cover issues associated with evaluation of a digital library from the point of view of end-users.

The first lessons covers tools and activities necessary to evaluate user interface usability. The second lesson deals with other important aspect of digital library usability - information retrieval capabilities which includes assessing quality and coherence of metadata. In last lesson you will learn about the importance of the analysis of a digital library usage.

Tema 9

Course summary

This final part summarizes list of the most important elements of this course.

You will see how many things should be now familiar for you and where to search for additional information. The final lesson introduces the Europeana (aka. European Digital Library, Museum and Archive) and invites you to participate in a course dedicated to it, titled "Cooperation with Europeana".

CARNET - Arhiva 2021 Loomen

Diagrama de temas