The most recent reading for my digital history class was Chapter 3, "Becoming Digital", from Digital History: A Guide to Gathering, Preserving, and Presenting the Past on the Web by Daniel Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig. This chapter is near and dear to my heart because of my past experience digitizing text and still images.
One concern I have when the word "digitization" starts getting thrown around is that a distinction needs to be made between "making something in to a digital format" and "making something available online". I consider my past work as a volunteer and intern (explanation to come, hold on) to be "digitization" even though most of what I did has not been put online and probably will not be. As discussed in Chapter 3, considerations about picture quality and file size hinge on what audience you are serving; not just hundreds of students vs. three researchers per year online, but also public vs. in-house.
An example of what I consider a public digitization project. This is a clear example of creating digital files and images of analog things and making them available to the wider public by putting them on a host website (Recollection Wisconsin). Having been the main person working on this project, I got a crash course in metadata, TIFFS, JPEGs, and dots per inch.
I also consider scanning, photographing, and adding search terms and other metadata to the in-house cataloging software (PastPerfect) to also be digitization. I believe both forms of making a digital product to be important and equally time-consuming.
Another AWESOME digitization project, just on a larger scale. The Book of Kells at Trinity College in Dublin. This was one of the things I kept thinking about while reading Chapter 3.
Questions I had while reading:
1. Are there examples of scanned documents that are searchable? I feel like there should be (Chapter 3 says there aren't, but this book is dated)
2. Is "mark up" text still a thing? I don't think I've read a typed transcript of an original document that used the mark up symbols the authors show in the "To Mark Up, or Not to Mark Up" section.
-B-
It is interesting that you list museum cataloging software as being "digitization." I have never really thought cataloging in that way, but I absolutely agree with you. The main purpose of cataloging a collection is to keep accurate records. This includes photographing and describing the objects. Having a digital record is much more helpful these days than the old card catalogs and I see connections between some of the technology described by Kelly and the cataloging software I have worked with. With some of the newer software, I can search a term "chair" and get a list of all of the objects that have "chair" somewhere in there metadata. This was not possible, in most instances, 15 years ago and it opens up exciting new options for museums in terms of collections management and curation.
ReplyDeleteYou make a very interesting distinction between two different kinds of digitization: making something in to a digital format and making something available online. I'm certainly guilty of throwing that word around without any further explanation. It's great that you have gained practical experience in both public and in-house digitization projects! So far, most of the places I have volunteered or interned have been more interested in creating digital formats for in-house use rather than making them available online.
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