The Costs of Digitization.

As the Digitization Coordinator at the Maryland Historical Society (MdHS), I have been approached many times about digitizing items on behalf of other institutions and receive inquiries from fellow staff members about why certain items in the collection are not yet digitized. With the amount of gigabytes currently being used on servers, hard drives, etc., I am becoming increasingly more selective about what exactly we spend time and resources on digitizing. We operate with an extremely small staff and on a non-profit budget.

I think there are several key factors about digitization that are left out of conversations. I’d like to talk about those key factors in December. Here are a few to begin with:

• Staff time. As I type this someone is probably out there trying to perfect new technologies to make digitization quicker (Gado, anyone?). However, staff time goes in to not only scanning or photographing items, but research, embedding metadata, creating inventory lists, creating both master and web-sized digital surrogates, backing up files, etc. It takes an incredible amount of time to properly digitize a historic item.
• Backup. Many institutions are not operating with proper digital backup. What technologies are people using exactly and how do we keep up this ever changing aspect of digitization?
• Dollar costs of backup. I’m definitely not an IT person but after purchasing a server for a massive digital archive of a German-language newspaper at MdHS, I understand that a server large enough for a few terabytes of information could cost upward of $10,000. Maintenance of these digital files and additional forms of backup and their importance should be discussed. Last month I attended the Library of Congress symposium Transitioning to a Digital Future and the first speaker placed a very strong emphasis on preservation of digital assets as well as analog materials. Without a preservation campaign, the importance of maintaining digital assets for future use is completely lost.
• The master file is forever (or at least for 100 years…hopefully?). When the Dept. of Imaging Services digitizes an item, we digitize it with the idea that we will do it once and not again unless it is absolutely necessary. Therefore, all of our digital files are considered master files, or at a pixel width that is high enough to get us through the next 50-100 years, hopefully. Digitization is stressful for any historic item, so we refrain from digitizing to custom sizes (i.e. “I only need this at 150 DPI, could you scan it really fast?”).

HEN.00.A2-178 Protestors outside segregated Ford's Theatre. Photograph by Paul Henderson, 1948.

Could we talk alternatives as well? I have just recently wrapped up the Paul Henderson Photograph Collection (ca. 1940-1960, Baltimore, see left) which contains over 6,000 4 x 5 and 8 x 10 inch negatives. It took me almost an entire day to digitize eight to ten 4 x 5 inch negatives so I had to come up with an alternative way for the public to see these valuable photographs. I (as well as one helpful intern for a semester) photographed each individual negative (at a low resolution size) on a light table, inverted them in Photoshop, and created Reference Only documents which can be viewed in the library. This method took less time, costs less money to maintain the digital surrogates for, and now MdHS library visitors can view the images as positives instead of negatives and requests higher resolution images on demand. It also prevents the negatives from being pulled for patron use. Again, the less stress, the better.

A big thanks to Baltimore Heritage and the partners for making this unconference possible. I’m really looking forward to meeting everyone in December.