Selecting Research Collections for Digitization: Applying the Harvard Model

ONEOF THE MOST IMPORTANT CHALLENGES facing digital library planners is the selection of research collections for digitization. The costs associated with creating digital resources are significant. Planners must develop selection criteria and procedures in order to ensure that limited time and resources are committed to projects to digitize the most significant collections with the highest probability of successful completion. Librarians at many academic libraries have developed selection criteria for the creation of digital collections. These criteria consider many of the same factors that go into the decision to license or purchase information resources. However, there are additional considerations. Librarians at Harvard University have written the most comprehensive guide to selecting research collections for digitization. In this article, the author applies the Harvard Model to a digitization project at Indiana University in order to evaluate the appropriateness of the model for use at another institution and to adapt the model to local needs. INTRODUCTION Indiana University’s Bloomington Libraries launched its first digital initiatives in the early 1990s, but it was not until November 1997 that a coalition of university partners created the Digital Library Program (http://www.dlib.indiana.edu) .The Indiana University Digital Library Program is dedicated to the selection, production, and maintenance of a wide range of high-quality networked resources for scholars and students at Kristine R. Brancolini, Digital Library Program, Indiana University Libraries, Main Library E170, 1320 E. Tenth Street, Bloomington, IN 47405 LIBRARY TRENDS, Vol. 48, No. 4, Spring 2000, pp. 783-798 02000 The Board of Trustees, University of Illinois 784 LIBRARY TRENDS/SPRING 2000 Indiana University and elsewhere. Building on a previous partnership with University Information Technology Services, it is a collaborative effort of the Indiana University Libraries, the Office of the Vice President for Information Technology, and the School of Library and Information Science. The goal of this collaboration is to capitalize on the institutional capabilities of this university, focusing university resources on digital library projects that support the teaching and research of IU faculty, support the learning and research of IU students, and foster research about digital libraries. Although one objective of the program is to support existing digital initiatives, such as the VARIATIONS Project in the Music Library, another is to encourage new digital initiatives, including projects to digitize portions of the research collections throughout the eight campuses of Indiana University. In the two years since the DLP was created, we have begun digitizing four research collections, two with internal funding and two with external funding, and are currently in the planning stages of a fifth project with partners from the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC). We support digital operations to provide resources exclusively to affiliates of Indiana University, such as VARIATIONS and the DIDO Image Bank and digital collections offered via the Web. All academic institutions that are planning and implementing digitization projects confront issues related to selecting collections for digitization. With limited time and resources, libraries can only undertake a limited number of digitization projects, based on wise and expeditious choices. A number of academic libraries have developed criteria and models for selecting research collections for digitization, including Columbia (1998), Harvard (1998), University of California (1997), and Oxford University (Lee, 1999). The most comprehensive model is the work of Dan Hazen, Jeffrey Horrell, and Jan Merrill-Oldham, of Harvard University, published in the CLIR monograph, Selecting Research Collections forDigitization (1998), referred to throughout this article as the Harvard Model. One of the attractive features of this monograph is that it includes a graphical matrix for decision making, summarizing the steps and questions outlined in the essay (see Figure 1).In order to evaluate this model, the author used it to reconsider the first DLP digitization project, an internally-funded project to digitize the Lilly Library’s Frank M. Hohenberger Photograph Collection. The Web site http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/lilly/ hohenberger/index.html, referred to throughout this article, contains a part of the Hohenberger Collection. The purpose of this evaluation was to answer the following questions: Would using the Harvard Model have led to the decision to digitize this collection? Does the Harvard Model include the major factors that were actually used to reach the decision? How might the model be customized to provide more reliable guidance to project planners in the DLP? -BRANCOLINI/COLLECTIONS FOR DIGITIZATION 785