Section 6: Conclusion
Managing a successful reformatting project requires effective communication, a basic knowledge of AV digitization techniques, and a deep understanding of how to work with a vendor. Creating a Request for Proposal and a Statement of Work informed by a detailed inventory and guided by the walkthrough detailed in this Chapter will help to ensure that project goals are understood by all and that files are properly delivered to the institution. Additionally, a process for quality control, rework, and ingest should be in place to make sure that returned files are vetted and effectively stored in the repository.
It will be the responsibility of the institution to establish a sustainable preservation program to ensure that the delivered files are well cared for long into the future. This requires planning, policies, a storage infrastructure, active management, and metadata. These topics as well as basic concepts in digital preservation are described in Chapter 4: Managing Digital Audiovisual Collections.