Rapid Capture: Mass Digitization of Special Collections

This activity is now closed. The information on this page is provided for historical purposes only.

This project investigated how those who are making progress digitizing special formats at scale are doing the digital capture. The emphasis was on the actual capture (not the preparation, the metadata creation, or the preparation for access). The investigation included in-house approaches, outsourcing solutions, hardware (scanners, cameras, and related materials handling and lighting equipment), staffing (shifts and other factors that contribute to scale), as well as actual throughput.

Google and the Internet Archive have shown how book digitization can be streamlined, resulting in books being digitized in quantities that were unfathomable ten years ago. This activity sought to find similar advances in approaches to increasing the scale of digitization of special collections. The goal of this activity was to help others get up to scale in digitization of special collections by exposing them to successful capture approaches.

Outputs

• Webinar: Rapid Capture in Special Collections and Archives, 27 October 2011
• Report: Rapid Capture: Faster Throughput in Digitization of Special Collections, by Ricky Erway (.pdf: 807K/23 pp.)

While the report details a variety of implementations, if your institution has or had a large-scale digitization initiative that included rapid capture of non-book formats, we'd like to hear about it. Please contact Ricky Erway.

• Ricky Erway

Project lead: Ricky Erway

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