Surfacing Special Collections through Digitisation - Libraries of the Future
UK academic librarians are custodians of a fantastically rich range of diverse cultural material, whether it be pamphlets, films, prints, newspapers, letters, photographs manuscripts, and so on.
But libraries are often short of funds to create digital version of such material and provide access to them. The recent RIN report stated that 50% of library research collections are as yet uncatalogued. This obviously severely inhibits use - if nobody knows about them nobody will use them!
Researchers appreciate digital material because they provide further primary material to engage with, allowing for new methodologies and approaches in familiar areas. Teachers appreciate them because students can gain instant access to difficult-to-reach resources. The general public appreciates them because they tap into enthusiasms such as genealogy and local history.Digitisation programmes such as JISC's can provide an opportunity to surface collections and provide immediate access to them over the Internet
Digitisation programmes such as JISC's can provide an opportunity to surface such collections and provide immediate access to them over the Internet.
But digitisation is more than simply placing a document on a scanner. With so much to digitise, for example, how do we know what to prioritise? And how do libraries pay for digitisation? Should libraries pay up front? Should users pay for access? Or are there other models?
A great deal of material still has ambiguous copyright status: how do librarians ensure that they can safely publish digitised material on the web?
The following are a selection of links to resources, provided by both JISC and other organisations, which explore these and other issues and which help to address some of the key challenges being faced by libraries and librarians in their efforts to digitise collections of key scholarly resources.
