Utilizing Resources At-Hand: Fitting Diverse Content from Diverse Content Providers into a Common System

Abstract

University digital repositories represent a major challenge in that they require people from a variety of disciplines to conform to a set of standards to make their materials searchable. While each discipline is unique and each department has different financial and professional resources available, consistency across collections is necessary to produce an attractive and useful digital repository. Librarians can play a key role in helping departments across the university understand and implement metadata schema, archival scanning standards, and tools for effective accessibility to digital collections while working with the limited resources available to design a practical digitization plan. This paper describes development of a digitization plan for two different university departments whose resources and skills sets represent both ends of the resource spectrum. Collection needs were addressed by understanding the department goals and language, understanding of the materials to be digitized and the audience they will serve, and implementing standards that are consistent across collections yet applicable to the audience. This approach has worked to quickly launch several digital collections on a university campus that would otherwise remain hidden and unutilized because of challenges posed by limited departmental resources.