[Wikimediaau-l] Bringing the wiki model to digitisation

[Brianna Laugher]

Hi,

Stephen, an interesting idea, and it is great to see that people who
couldn't attend are thinking about GLAM related issues too.

I wonder, what are the GLAM standards for digitisation and archival?
Can we find out what they are? My first guess is that they may be
different to the standards required at Wikisource (is there a minimum
requirement? is it specified?).

2009/8/14 Stephen Bain <stephen.bain at gmail.com>:
> With a bit of organisation, I think it would be possible to set up a
> 'DIY digitisation' project for archival material, which would aim to
> produce digital copies of material at a quality level good enough to
> use for transcription at Wikisource.

Hmm... There are a few concerns I guess GLAMs are likely to have:

1- Maintaining the original. Letting untrained people come in and
handle their treasures is likely to freak them out. Esp. if you want
to digitise something, it may mean it is the only extant copy of it,
so the risk for damage may not be acceptable to them.

2- Quality of digitisation. My impression from a Museum 3.0 meetup in
Melbourne a few weeks ago is that from their perspective, there is an
awful lot to digitsation and archiving, more than just any man and his
scanner, which they believe is the public perception.
You mention later the limited stock of professional labour. There is
some recognition, then, that being a professional archivist is more
than just operating a scanner. They may feel the need to supervise,
review or vet our work, meaning it is still not cost-free to them (and
may cost more than getting a professional, while we are 'ramping up'.)

3- Variability of volunteers. Given there would still be significant
effort on their part, I imagine they would be disappointed if
volunteers ended up walking away (as volunteers retain the prerogative
to do!).

OTOH, while at GLAM-WIKI, one attendee shared an anecdote about how
the director of the V&A museum in London put up all their collections
information on the web "by fiat". All the curators were horrified at
having their half-complete information made available, and they wanted
to make sure everything was going through the various quality stages
and all those kinds of things. But it went ahead and in the end, they
saw that the sky didn't cave in, and it was OK for things not to be
perfect before they went public.

So I see some difficulties, but there are some interesting elements to consider.

cheers,
Brianna

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