Digitization Program

The SCRLC Digitization Program has been charged to:

Identify and include unique collections that reflect the historical significance of the South Central region of NYS.
Identify organizational partners in the South Central region of New York State.
Train contributors to develop the skills to select and contribute to New York Heritage and New York Historic Newspapers.
Promote standards that create consistency in descriptions and allow for searching across collections.
Promote New York Heritage as a valuable resource for students, educators and lifelong learners.

The digitizing program at SCRLC was developed with funds from:

South Central Regional Library Council operating budget
New York State Regional Bibliographic Databases Program
Senator George Winner, 53rd Senate District
Friends of the Tompkins County Public Library
Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton, 125th Assembly District

Do you have a collection you'd like to digitize and add to New York Heritage? If you're already a member, contact Claire Lovell to get started!

If you're not yet a member, consider joining! See how here or contact Mary-Carol Lindbloom.

Policy for Historical Societies' and Cultural Organizations' Participation in SCRLC's Digitization Program

CONSULTATION AND PLANNING

SCRLC's Digital Services Librarian helps to evaluate our members' collections for digitization, assists in digitization project planning documentation, and helps develop workflows for our members and their staff. SCRLC also provides consultation for other areas in digital management, such as digital preservation.

If you're new to digitization, take a look at this document to help plan your project and this list of questions to ask before starting a digitization project.

We also have a Digitization Advisory Committee, which provides guidance and expertise for our digitization program.

TRAINING

SCRLC provides training for members on how to digitize their collections, using digitization best practices and standards. We provide recommended technical specifications, and help set up and use scanning equipment. We also provide training in cataloging and metadata, and in the use of various software used in the management of digital assets, which we cater to our members' individual technical needs.

WEB HOSTING

Hosting digital collections in New York Heritage Digital Collections is provided with no charge or additional fees for our members. SCRLC and New York Heritage also actively promote exploration of digital collections via social media, blog posts, and online exhibitions.

DIGITAL PRESERVATION

Digital preservation is available for SCRLC members in the Digital Dark Archive, created and administered by the Southeastern NY Library Resources Council (SENYLRC). The Digital Dark Archive is long term storage of digital files, meant to serve as a "last resort" backup. SCRLC will take your preservation-quality master copies and send them to the Digital Dark Archive, where the files will be processed via Archivematica and stored via Amazon Glacier. The cost for this is $1 per 1 gigabyte of storage. As a courtesy, SCRLC will add all of its members' NYHeritage collections to the Digital Dark Archive for free.

FUNDING

SCRLC tries to make between $20,000 and $30,000 of grant funds available annually to our members, depending on the council's budget circumstances. Members can apply for up to $5,000 for an individual project or $8,000 for a collaborative project between members. Digitization grant funding can be used for digitization or metadata projects. Any information technology project that will help share and improve access to your resources regionally may qualify for funding.

EQUIPMENT

SCRLC will lend out digitization equipment to members and provide custom training.

Zeutschel Zeta Book Scanner
This is not available for lending due to its size, weight and fragility, but members are always welcome to visit SCRLC's office and use it there.

This is an overhead scanner with automatic cropping and deskewing features.

We have been able to scan about 200 pages per hour with this scanner.

Smith-Victor 42" Pro-Duty Copy Stand Kit
This copy stand has removable, flexible lights and can be lent out with our DSLR, a Canon EOS with a wide angle lens.

GlideGear Camera Stand

For oversized material, use this camera stand and take multiple shots. This can be lent out with our DSLR as well.

Epson Perfection V600 Photo

This easily portable scanner has a bed of 17" by 22" and can deliver high resolution scans. It can can reflective surfaces (like documents and photos) as well as negative or positive film (like slides).

Epson 11000XL
This large, slow scanner is able to do resolutions up to 2400 dpi and has a scan bed area of 12.2" x 17.2". It has a variety of frames to handle negatives and positive film such as slides.

Cassette Converter
This little device plugs into a computer and converts cassette tapes to mp3. This would not be archival quality but can produce a digital access copy.