Language is a living thing. The static handwritten and typeset characters that have recorded it can come to life in amazing ways in a digital, networked environment. Current and imminent technology offers us unprecedented opportunities to deliver, download, store, share, index, cross-reference, analyze, and annotate the written word. To take advantage of these opportunities, digital text objects must be created and nurtured appropriately. Page images, machine-readable characters, and robust, well-formed metadata are respectively, the body, mind, and soul of well-rounded and well-behaved digitized text. The formative technical processes and associated costs involved in each of these aspects will be discussed by pulling the curtain back on some selected examples of digital text projects – revealing how they were created, why (or if) they work, and what their goals and motives seem to be. Participants will have a better sense of the options available and steps involved for creating digital text and thus, a better-informed process for determining goals, hopes, and dreams for their own projects.

Audio & Video Digitization: Fundamentals, First Steps, and Finance
Sam Brylawski, University of California, Santa Barbara

Preservation of sound recordings and video into digital formats has only recently been accepted into the family of best practices. While the analog era is behind us, standards and best practices for digital audio­visual preservation are still in the process of being developed and documented. This presentation will review available resources and options for digitization of audio and video and issues, and criteria to be considered when planning and budgeting a project. These include selection and prioritizing of audio-visual collections for digitization, the physical characteristics and content of source materials, emerging file format and metadata standards, and the challenges of long-term storage. The presentation will also review resources required for in-house digitization of audio-visual materials and criteria to be employed when choosing a contractor to carry out a project.

Transforming Reels: How to Get the Best Out of Your Film Digitization Projects
Karen Colbron, WGBH Educational Foundation

As we face the ongoing push by our users to digitize our collections, it is easy to target the more accessible, and generally cheaper, formats such as documents and stills. Film materials are often pushed to the bottom of the priority pile because of unfamiliarity with the format, potentials costs involved, and lack of technical knowledge as to the best way to organize and digitize these materials.

WGBH Educational Foundation has undertaken several diverse film digitizing projects within the last few years using local and remote facilities and vendors. Most recently they embarked on a 2-year project to reconstitute the majority of the film materials generated by the series Vietnam: A Television History.

By presenting several case studies from large-scale film reconstitution to smaller-scale digitization projects, we can begin to address the questions that we need to ask as we contemplate our film digitization projects. What is the real purpose of digitizing our films? Who are the audience, and what do they expect to see? What are the potential pitfalls, and what questions should we be asking vendors? The lessons learned and advice given will prepare you with a toolkit to digitize your film materials – no matter how big or small your budget or collection.