Make it Digital
DigitalNZ's Make it Digital guides are designed to help museums, libraries, archives, and other organisations in Aotearoa New Zealand to manage digitisation projects, including born digital content.
What is digitisation?
Digitisation is the act of making a digital copy or digital recording of an analogue item. The scan, digital photo, or audio/video file created from the item becomes the digitised version of the actual item. It can be stored and shared electronically.
What are the benefits of digitising collection items?
Digitising collection items provides:
increased access to collections, particularly for communities who are unable to visit an organisation in person
increased engagement with collections
the ability for researchers to search across collections and use data to create new knowledge
online access to fragile physical items that need to be protected during in person visits.
Make it Digital guides
Before you begin your digitisation project, whether large or small, there are a few things to think through. Our Make it Digital guides step you through the digitisation process to help with your planning. If you have any feedback about the Make it Digital guides, please get in touch by emailing info@digitalnz.org.
1. Selecting for digitisation
If you already know what you want to digitise, skip straight ahead to 'Creating digital content'. For those of you digitising large collections, whether you plan to create new material or digitise existing material, having a robust selection and prioritisation process will be key to a successful outcome. We provide six tips for creating a selection policy, plus a Make it Digital scorecard (a decision-making tool) and a list of selection resources.
2. Creating digital content
The choices you make at the point of creation, in particular the format that your content is created in, greatly affects how useful and long-lived your content will be. This guide includes detailed information about digitising different types of content.
3. Describing digital content
If you want your digital content to be stored, found, and used over time, it needs to have good file naming and associated metadata that describes what the content is, where it came from, and who can use it. This guide is mostly for those managing large collections. We also provide a detailed list of metadata resources.
4. Managing digital content
Acquiring a basic knowledge of records management is a pre-requisite for properly organising any volume of digital content beyond a few dozen items. This guide discusses databases, content management systems, and repositories. We also provide a detailed list of management resources.
5. Preserving digital content
Once your digital content has been created and beautifully labelled, you need to make sure it's going to survive the ongoing digital revolution. Digital preservation involves strategies to back up, archive, and migrate your digital content to new media and software systems over time to keep it viable. We also provide a list of detailed preservation resources.
6. Enabling use and reuse
It's always a good idea to let people know what they can and cannot do with your digital content once it's online, and that means managing the copyright. This guide talks you through the basics of what copyright is, how to figure out who owns it, and how to license it.