Went to MSCUA this afternoon to work with my group on our final project for LIS559. The project is to work on some sort of digitizing project on campus, and we got assigned to work on a project to digitize art papers, mostly historical marbled book papers. (You know those pretty endpapers in some books? That's what we're talking about.) It wasn't an arbitrary assignment; we all expressed an interest in this project, but we didn't get really free choice either.
It's a fairly complicated project, and in the end we're going to have very little digitization to show for it. We're going to end up doing more planning than anything else, because there's a lot to plan for. What objects to digitize (selection), how to describe them (metadata), how to hand the project over when our part is done (sustainability), whether we have permission to make this stuff available in digital format (copyright), etc.
One huge issue is that the MSCUA folks we talked to don't consider digitization to be preservation. If people see these Babylonian clay tablets or rare 16th-century bindings online, they'll come in and want to see the Real Thing. On what basis do you refuse them? And if you don't, will the original artifacts degrade under the increased use? There has to be some sort of policy restriction in place, one that gives more detail than the qualification of serious research.
This is going to be one of my duties in the project, along with copyright.
It's going to be an interesting project, but there's unfortunately no way we can produce anything vaguely finished. We'll just do as much as we can before the end of the quarter. (At least the prof knows this and only expects us to put forth a good-faith effort.)
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