Planning a digitization Project

As you may have discovered, a digitization project is not just a scanning project. As I wrote in November, 1996, for InformationWeek, a digitization project includes the “basic processes - creation, storage, and management … interlocking pieces, each of whose configuration, impacts the requirements of the others."  For a successful sustainable project, you need to plan each piece: the project goals, mission, standards and procedures.

 

 

Importance of defining and setting your goals

Making Your Road Map - Know you destination before you start.

 

The key to managing a project is to have a well-defined project plan or road map. Such a plan helps you make decisions more effectively as the project progresses. It also helps you get back on track if you have a detour.  As with any road map, you need to know your destination before you can map your way to it; therefore, the best place to start a plan is at the end—the project goal.  What is the purpose of this project?

 

From this broad goal, you will lay out the map of how to get there. That is if you have a clearly defined specific goal. If you say you want to go to Washington, do you mean DC, the state, or Washington Iowa? To be more specific, if we were to digitize a postcard collection, we might say our goal is to provide an insight into the manner of communications.  These are great words, but what exactly does insight mean or what part of the postcard communication do we want to capture.  Do we mean the images used on postcards or the messages handwritten on them?  Do we care about the postmark dates?   If postcards are damaged, do we still want to include them?   What publishing rights do we require?  The more specific we can be about our goals for the project, the easier it will be to answer these questions. 

 

 

SPAM Statements

Specific, Positive, Achievable and Measurable.

 

One method to help us clearly describe our goals is called the SPAM method. While we may hate Spam in our mailboxes, in project planning it is very useful.  The key stands for specific, positive, achievable and measurable goal statements.

 

“Specific” goals involve parsing a broad description into its basic components.  For example, we have a broad goal to provide our users with “insight into the manner of communications”. Specifically, that might mean we want to create digital files with the goal that someone can:

 

•  see the image via the web, with a modem connection and on a monitor capable of displaying 1000 x 800 pixels
• can read the message on the postcard
•  or even read the postal stamp.

   

“Positive” goals express your goals by saying what will happen, not what won’t happen. For example, “the fine handwriting on the postcards will be legible on the image” rather than “the fine handwriting on the postcard should not be obscured.” It is much easier to specify what will happen than the possible unacceptable situations.

 

An “achievable” goal is one that you can accomplish with your equipment, staff and budget.

 

“Measurable” goals provide an objective means to evaluate your success.  For example, “high resolution” is subjective, whereas “a 1 centimeter wide line drawn on a diagonal will be scanned as an unbroken line” is objective.

 

You should create a SPAM statement for each of the phases of your project: planning, implementing, and using. Do not forget to include budget, staffing and schedule in these statements.  Here is an example:

 

            Planning: Research and develop standards and procedures that will meet the project goals. Complete these tasks in a two-week period with one           week to review and comment.

Implementation: This project will have a budget of $1000 capital expenses and 300 hours of labor. The project timeline will run for a six-month period, using a new scanner yet to be purchased and 1.5 staff. The maintenance of the project will be as automated as possible, only requiring 10 hours of staff time a month.

 

Use: This project will illustrate the history of postcards as a communication device.  Users will browse a web-based catalog of screen images from which they can find postcards used as holiday greeting cards and travel documentation.  They will also be able study handwriting examples and verbal expressions.  From their search, they may request prints of the postcard illustrations at their original size.  This project will also promote the Historical Society’s existing and credit the donor’s gift.

 

Now that you have your road map, you can start putting a schedule to the trip.  The first part of this is creating a task list. This is actually just a continuation of parsing your goals. What do you need to do to reach that goal?

 

Project Schedule

First, you need to develop a complete list of all tasks required and then put them in an order of execution. Let us look at tasks that are involved in a digitizing procedure.  A digitizing procedure describes the workflow of items through the digitization process.  It will include how the items will arrive at the digitization station, the actual digitization process, the handling of the file created, the storage of that file, and the return of the item to its proper place.  A list of tasks required to do this might look like this:

 

• Selecting items
• Recording items going to digitization
• Preparing items for digitization
• Digitization of items
• Recording digitization method and attributes (color and scale reference)
• Naming image file
• Saving image file
• Recording image file location
• Returning items to archival storage
• Recording items returned
• Noting image file creation
   

The next step is to organize these tasks into their sequence of execution and then to identify those tasks, which are critical to this execution. For example while you could scan items without having selected, recorded, or prepared all the items, you can’t start until you have the file naming and directory structure established. Defining the file naming and directory structure then is a critical item to other tasks execution.

 

Critical Path: Chicken or the egg

As you create a project schedule or the order in which you will execute the tasks, you are forming the timeline for your project. Within this timeline, some critical tasks will set the schedule for the rest. As described above, it may a task which must be completed before others can begin. Alternatively, it may be a task outside of your control, such as: approval from a managing board that meets on a set schedule. It might also be one whose schedule is set by equipment or time limitations, such as you only have time to catalog five items a day.  There will be more than one task. They may be unrelated, but together they will establish the real schedule of your project. The schedule that those critical tasks form is known as the Critical Path for a project.

 

As the ideal project has a consistent and smooth workflow, identifying your Critical Path, allows you to prepare for the “logjams” and to schedule other activities at a pace with the real project timeline.  Therefore, an important guideline to planning is to identify those tasks whose execution:

 

• Are critical for other tasks’ implementation
• Are set externally
• Are set by limitations  (meaning? staff  & other resources?  This topic isn’t coverd in the previous paragraph)

 

Guidelines, Standards and Benchmarks

 

 

Measurements

 

Guidelines, standards and benchmarks are all terms defining the measurement aspect of your SPAM statement.  Guidelines may be broader or explicit, while standards and benchmarks should have mathematical measurements attached. Scanning so that the handwriting is legible is a guideline.  You must then define the standard that will result in that goal. Scanning at a resolution of 600 dpi is such a standard.   Fortunately for you, many people have been developing standards, but that does not mean their standards, guidelines or benchmarks will meet your goals.  You must evaluate for what goals these standards are designed and whether these match your goals.

 

On the other hand, a benchmark is the measurement that verifies that a standard will meet your guideline.  See Cornell’s study of text legibility www.clir.org/pubs/abstract/pub53.html based on the size of the text. It results in an equation that sets the resolution that you require to meet the benchmark you have set.  That resolution then becomes one of the standards that you will use when scanning.

 

To summarize:

 

• Make as detailed a road map as you can,
• Be sure the details are not only specific, but also positive, attainable, and measurable statements.

• Do this for each phase of your project: planning, implementing and using.

• Adopt guidelines and standards that satisfy your goals

 

 

Resources:

 

Moving Theory in Practice, Digital Imaging for Libraries and Archives, ISBN 0-9700225.5-0-6, RLG publisher and edited by Anne Keeney and Oya Reiger, is a great source of information useful in planning a digital project. The two authors also still provide their Tutorial online at:  www.library.cornell.edu/preservation/tutorial/contents.html

 

Handbook for Digital Projects: A management Tool for Preservation and Access, Northeast Document Conservation Center. 2000  http://nedcc.org/oldnedccsite/digital/dighome.htm