Small Museum’s Guide to Making the Jump to Digital and the Web

Joe HooverFebruary 2012

It Depends.

Digital

Why Digitize?

•Involve/engage public•Aid researchers•Altruistic (share the collection)•Minimize staff time on requests•Gain publicity•Reproduction sales•Increase donations

Project Planning: Labor

•In House•Regular Staff•Volunteers•Interns

•Outsource

Prioritizing Digital Preservation Media Tasks

1. Analog media that is deteriorating or fading in the case of color photos

2. Media that requires rare/outmoded devices for playback.

3. Material in your collection that could not be replaced if it were lost or damaged.

4. Material in your collection that is frequently requested or accessed and has high research value

Low Risk

High Risk

High ValueLow Value

Digital Asset Priority Matrix

Don’t Put the Cart before the horse

These are logical steps to complete before digitization

•General collections survey•Collections inventory•Registration (cataloging)•Collections storage•Conservation treatment

Choices for online access

•All, Some or None•Watermarks•Image size•Members only•Web hosting considerations

What to Digitize? What about Copyright?

•Historical Collections (photos and text):•Public domain (1923)•No known copyright

•Fare use •Smaller low resolution images online only

Key points to consider:•Don’t assume everything should be digitized. •Assume Best Practices not “Gold Standard”•Access is key. •Digitizing makes it possible to produce a good catalog, which then makes the value of the materials obvious to others.•On-line catalogues and promotional information are critical to encourage broad usage.•Compared to film and photos, magnetic video and audio are often “overlooked” for preservation.•Transferring older videotapes and film to digital formats requires a plan and realistic timeline.

Digital FormatsMedia Preferred Possible Unacceptable Web Access Only

Text

- Plain text (encoding: USASCII, UTF-8, UTF-16 withBOM)- PDF/A-1-a (*.pdf)

- PDF/A-1-b (*.pdf)(embedded fonts)- Rich Text Format (*.rtf)

- Microsoft Word (*.doc)- PDF (external font)- All other text formats notlisted here

- Plain text - PDF/A-1-a (*.pdf)- PDF/A-1-b (*.pdf)

Images(ie: Photos, scanned documents)

- TIFF (*.tiff) (uncompressed)

- JPEG2000 (uncompressed)(*.jp2, *.jpx)

- BMP (*.bmp)

- TIFF (*.tiff)(with LZWcompression or in Planar format)- GIF (*.gif)-JPEG/JFIF (*.jpg,jpeg)-PNG (*.png)- PhotoShop (*,psd)- All other raster image formats not listed here

-JPEG/JFIF(*.jpg)-PNG(*.png)- GIF (*.gif)

Audio - WAVE (.wav)

- Standard MIDI (*.mid,*.midi)- Ogg Vorbis (*.ogg)- AIFF(uncompressed) (*.aif,*.aiff)

- RealNetworks ‘Real Audio’(*.ra, *.rm, *ram)- QuickTime (*.mov)- Windows Media Audio (*.wma) - WAVE (compressed) (*.wav)- MP3 (*.mp3)- AIFC (*.aifc)- NeXT SND (*.snd)- All other audio formats notlisted here

- MP3 (*.mp3)- Windows Media Audio (*.wma) - QuickTIme (*.mov)- Windows Media Audio (*.wma) - Ogg Vorbis (*.ogg)- Adobe Flash (*.fla)

Video

- AVI¶(uncompressed or DV compression forVideo Tape) (*.avi)

- QuickTime Movie¶(uncompressed or DV compression forVideo Tape) (*.mov)

- Material Exchange Format(*.mxf)

- Ogg Theora (*.ogg)

- AVI (compressed) (*.avi)- QuickTime Movie  (compressed) (*.mov)- Windows Media Video (*.wmv) - RealNetworks ‘Real Video’(*.rv, *.rm, *ram)- MPEG-1, MPEG-2 (*.mpg,*.mpeg)- All other video formats notlisted here

- MPEG-4 (*.mp4)- QuickTime Movie (*.mov)- Windows Media Video (*.wmv) - Ogg Theora (*.ogg)- Adobe Flash (*.fla)

Guidelines for Creating Digital Photographs

Master Web Access Thumbnail

File Format TIFF PNG or JPEG JPEG

Bit Depth 16 bit grayscale

24 bit color

8 bit grayscale

24 bit color

8 bit grayscale

24 bit color

SpatialResolution

400 to 800 ppi 72ppi 72ppi

SpatialDimensions

4000 to 8000 pixels across the long dimension, depending on size of original, excluding mounts and borders

600 pixels across the long dimension

150 to 200 pixels across the long dimension

Digitizing Oral History Audio

•WAV (BWF) format•Sample rate of 44.1kHz•16 bit depth.•Gain level monitored to insure consistent range among all recordings•No effects processing (compressor, EQ, etc.)

Digitizing Video and Film

Web

CMS Web sites

WordPress vs. Drupal

Average Monthly Maintenance Cost:

Average set up and customization costs:

Ease of Installation:

Who is it for?

Popular sites that use it

WORDPRESS DRUPAL

Information and graphics from Deviousmedia.com. To view these and other stats go to: http://bit.ly/pJWcWd

Google sites•100 MB of storage (for free account)•Site can display custom domain (e.g. www.example.com)•No ads are displayed, though each user may choose to monetize their site with the AdSense integration.•Multiple page layout options•Revision history for most page types•Access to a full library of custom gadgets which can be used to greatly extend the functionality of Google Sites.•Integrated with other Google Products

•YouTube, Google AdSense, Google Calendar, Google Maps, and Google Analytics, Google Checkout, etc…

Limitations:•Google logo at the top of pages (Free Account)•Limited page-design options•Limited Site storage capability•Limited e-store capabilities, can not add a custom shopping cart

Credit Card Work Around Solutions

•Google Checkout

•Paypal

Donation and member management

•GiveMN.org

•CiviCRM.org

Collection management &Online exhibits

Online CollectionManagement CMS

OnlineExhibits CMS

(omeka.org) (pachyderm.nmc.org)

(collectionspace.org)

(collectiveaccess.org)(collectiveaccess.org)

Mobile Tours

(mobilehistorical.org)

(omeka.org) (clevelandhistorical.org)

(tapintomuseums.org) (winonamntours.org)

Thank You