Useful Pointers

There is a considerable amount of useful information about digitisation projects available on the Web for free.  Some of these resources will be extremely useful when developing your proposal.

Arts and Humanities Data Service

The Arts and Humanities Data Service is a national service which collects, preserves and promotes re-use of the electronic resources which result from research in the arts and humanities. It has produced a collection of extremely useful publications. Of particular interest may be the Guides to Good Practice and the Case Studies which both explore the development of digitial resources and Digitisation: a project planning list.

British Universities Film & Video Council

The BUFVC is a representative body which aims to promote the production, study and use of film and related media in British higher education and research. The Council regularly offers one-day courses at its offices in Central London. Subjects covered include copyright clearance for multimedia production and the digitisation of moving pictures.

Content Management Systems

A detailed list of the different Content Management Systems currently available is provided in a recent Cultivate Interactive article, Content Management and Web Publishing Systems Gazetteer.

Cornell's Digital Imaging Tutorial: Moving Theory into Practice

The Department of Preservation and Conservation of Cornell University Library has produced an online digital imaging tutorial: Moving Theory into Practice, which provides an introduction on the use of digital imaging to convert and make accessible cultural heritage materials. The tutorial includes comparisions of various image-capture devices, guidelines on the creatation of metadata and the process of delivering digital images.

'Moving theory into practice: digital imaging for libraries and archives', an RLG Publication, see RLG below.

DIFFUSE

The Diffuse project provides a single, value-added, entry point to up-to-date reference and guidance information on available and emerging standards and specifications that facilitate the electronic exchange of information. Of particular interest may be the data representation section of the standards and specifications list.

Digital Preservation Workbook

A pre-publication draft of the Preservation Management of Digital Materials Workbook is now available as a pdf file. The workbook has been produced by Neil Beagrie (Joint Information Systems Committee) and Maggie Jones (Arts and Humanities Data Service) with research funding from Resource: the Council for Museums Archives and Libraries . The workbook provides a comprehensive overview of digital preservation issues and practice and will be of interest to ditigitisation projects and curators in museums, libraries, archives and the cultural heritage, research and publishing sectors.

Distributed National Electronic Resource (DNER)

The DNER is the networked environment that provides users in further and higher education with a range of digital collections and advisory services to support their use. Working with the DNER: Standards and Guidelines to Build a National Resource provides guidelines and practices critical to developing, managing, and delivering digital resources online. Although developed for the DNER programme, this document is a useful addition to the standards and guidelines produced for nof-digitise.

The DNER Technical Architecture: scoping the information environment study describes the generic technical architecture of the DNER.

E-Government Bulletin

This newsletter covers electronic public services, 'teledemocracy' and the information society in the UK and worldwide. Also included are tips on creating successful public sector Web sites. The newsletter is available by email and the archives can be searched through the Web site.

European Standards Map

An initiative that aims to provide an overview of information relating to procedural and information management standards including content, resource and structure description standards and technological standards and protocols throughput Europe. See the current information available for the UK. A Glossary of Terms has also been developed.

GIS 2001

The GIS 2001 exhibition in September 2001 "aims to provide both GIS aware professionals and and those unfamiliar with the benefits of GIS applications, with business and technology solutions that deliver practical applications to meet today's business challenges".

Glossaries

A glossary of digitisation terms is available along with the European Standards Map from the European Museums' Information Institute. A metadata glossary is available from the UKOLN Web site.

Intellectual Property Portal

This IP Portal - produced by the UK Patent Office site - provides basic information about intellectual property.

HEDS

The Higher Education Digitisation Service (HEDS) provides advice, consultancy and a complete production service for digitisation and digital library development. It serves not only the education sector, but also provide services to public libraries, museums, archives and other non-profit making organisations. It has produced a useful collection of resources online - these include How to Cost A Digitisation Project and Digitisation: Strategic and Management Issues.

JIDI: The JISC Image Digitisation Initiative

The JISC Image Digitisation Initiative (JIDI) is creating archive quality digital images from a number of Higher Education image collections throughout the UK. Useful documents available on their Web site include a report of the JIDI Feasibility Study, Workflow Guidelines of the digitisation process and Metadata Requirements.

Library Services for the Visually Impaired: a Manual of Best Practice

Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries have just published a manual of best practice which aims to provide a practical guide for library managers and staff in the provision of library and information services for people with a visual impairment. Chapters 13 - Aids and assistive technology and 14 - Accessible library websites: design for all,  are particularly relevant to the development of digitial content.

MAAS Media Online

MAAS Media Online is a national service acquiring moving pictures and sound for delivery online to the higher and further education communities in the UK. The advisory service provides information and feedback to users on obtaining access, promotes and advises on the use of appropriate technology and tools, offers guidance on pedagogy and gives user support and online advice.

mda: Overview of Collectins Management Software

This organisation supports the information management needs of museums, galleries and heritage organisations. Their Web site provides a regularly updated overview of a number of commercially available content management software packages.

Metadata for sound recordings, music scores and video

The approach adopted at the University is Surrey is discussed in an FAQ. A copy of the schema (DTD) used and some samples are available.

Moock Lecture Series

Deploying and detecting Flash: thoughts on when to use flash, when to use html, choosing the right version of flash and implementing a flash detection system.

Museums and Galleries Copyright Working Group

This working group have produced "A Guide to Copyright for Museums and Galleries". It was published by Routledge, in 2000 (ISBN 0-415-21721-0). It includes a large number of licences which can be used copyright-free.

National Library of Australia

The persistence of links to online resources is essential to ensure long-term public access to web-based materials. The National Library of Australia has just produced a set of guidelines Managing web resources for persistent access, designed to assist those responsible for the management of online materials to ensure that links made to those resources continue to work.

Networked Services Policy Taskgroup

The Networked Services Policy Taskgroup regularly produces issue papers exploring the policy issues created by the development of networked services in public libraries. Several of these papers are relevant to the nof-digisation call. In particular, applicants may find the papers on Digitisation, Copyright and Charging useful. The Taskgroup consists of representatives from UKOLN, the Library Association and EARL partner libraries. The production of the issue papers is project managed by UKOLN.

NOF-digitise job bank

The NOF-digitise job bank, hosted by the People's Network, is updated regularly and brings together vacancies on projects funded through the NOF Digitisation Prgramme.

RLG: Guides to Quality in Visual Resource Imaging

The Research Libraries Group, together with the Digitial Library Federation and the Council on Library and Infomration Resources have published a series of guides designed to serve the growing community of museums, archives and research libraries turning to imaging as a way to provide greater access to their visual resources while simultaneously preserving the original materials. Guides include Selecting a Scanner and File Formats for Digital Masters.

RLG: Moving theory into practice: digital imaging for libraries and archives

This Research Libraries Group publication, by Anne R. Kenney and Oya Y. Reiger, is a comprehensive "how-to" guide to digitisation based on experiences at Cornell University. Although not online, information about the publication is available at  http://www.rlg.org/preserv/mtip2000.html.

RLG DigiNews

Digital Reproduction Quality: Benchmark Recommendations. This article introduces a benchmark developed for preservation digital masters to enhance the interoperability of digital collections.

TASI

The Technical Advisory Service for Images (TASI) aims to share and promote technical expertise and standards and to enable the academic community to create high quality archives of digital images by providing information and advice. TASI maintains a collection of useful online resources including a number of successful digitisation case studies. There also run a series of workshops for those involved in digitisation projects, those who wish to capture images and those who wish to use digital images in teaching and research.

useit.com: Jakob Nielsen's Website

Jakob Nielsen founded the 'discount usability engineering' movement for fast and cheap improvements of user interfaces and has invented several usability methods. He holds 50 US patents, mainly on ways of making the Internet easier to use. The useit.com Web site brings together a wide range of resources and information on Web usability.