Make it Digital

Getting Started with Digitisation

Before you get started with your digitisation project, whether large or small, there are a few things to think through. We've set out seven handy tips to help out your planning.

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.

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. We've provided some detailed guides to help you through the various different kinds of digitisation:

  1. Digitising Family History and Whakapapa
  2. Photography and Imaging
  3. Creating Digital Text
  4. Creating Digital Audio
  5. Creating Digital Video
  6. Digitisation Resources
  7. Open Standards

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.

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.

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.

Enabling Use & 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. We also provide a public domain guide, remix guide, copyright status flowcharts, and detailed rights and usage resources.

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