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The purpose of this paper is to determine digitization selection strategies to optimize usage by examining digital collections at Stockton University, comparing the library-driven projects to the community-driven ones.

Case study of digitization selection strategy for Special Collections and University Archives, comparing library-driven to community-driven approaches.

Based on webpage analytics of the digital collections, community-driven digitization projects are more successful than library-driven ones.

As a case study, this paper only analyzes a select number of digital collections from one institution.

Those responsible for digitization selection may wish to allow community members to propose collections for digitization.

To the authors’ best knowledge, no other known studies have used user analytics to compare community-driven digitization projects to library-driven ones.

In the decades since the founding of the Society of American Archivists (SAA) in 1938, the array of functions considered core to archival work have grown and evolved. In the early years of SAA, the profession was largely focused on issues of collection maintenance, heavily emphasizing preservation as the fundamental mission of the archivist. Yet, at this time, there were archivists calling on their colleagues to engage with audiences outside of the archival reading room. It was not until the social history movements in the 1970s, however, that discussions of outreach as a core function of the archivist's work took hold in the profession. From the 1970s and moving through to today, outreach and proactive engagement with external communities has moved from a peripheral activity of the archivist to one seen as essential to the overall success of an archival program. In this chapter, we examine the evolving discourse surrounding outreach and engagement activities by archivists, focusing on how outreach has been discussed in professional literature. We also explore ways in which this shift in professional perspective is reflected in the work done today by archivists at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

The Texas Digital Newspaper Program (TDNP) supports newspaper preservation and access for any title in Texas, from any date, any location and representing any community. As an active member of the Texas Press Association, TDNP also supports large-scale preservation of born-digital newspaper PDF issues for member publishers. This paper aims to explore how the early days of TDNP built a strong foundation of collaboration and support for large-scale preservation projects, including support for preserving a state press association PDF newspaper collection.

This paper is a case study of a collaborative endeavor to create a large-scale, statewide digital newspaper preservation hub in Texas. This paper details how individual partnerships led to new and larger partnerships. Figures and tables represent numbers of partner institutions served, numbers of newspapers preserved and screenshots of how these items appear within collections on the digital repository environment of The Portal to Texas History. This paper concludes with recommendations for groups interested in developing their own collaborative projects.

As a case study, the data explored include numbers of partnering institutions, materials contributed by partnering institutions and how these numbers help to forward the TDNP agenda.

The final recommendations are lessons learned through collaboration, and the implications are real-world advice from the partners developed through the TDNP.

Hosting over 3.25 million pages of newspapers, the TDNP has become an enormous hub of newspaper preservation in Texas, and it is unique in the numbers of partners it supports and the numbers of pages it is able to host for free access via The Portal to Texas History. This paper is intended to help other groups across the world build their own collaborative preservation efforts, and it offers pragmatic advice derived from hands-on experience.

This paper aims to explore library–community collaboration from both a theoretical and practical perspective, highlighting successful collaborative strategies and projects and illustrating important considerations for libraries that are considering community partnerships.

This paper consists of a literature review and several “capsule” case studies of projects completed at one academic library to illustrate principles that can result in successful collaborative projects.

Library–community collaboration presents significant benefits if the needs and priorities of all collaborating partners are taken into account. Successful projects will use the strengths of one partner to balance the weaknesses of another, will be based on shared goals, will offer credit to all partners and will result in stronger relationships for all involved.

Although library–community partnerships are not uncommon, many of these partnerships are housed in public libraries or involve only large, institutional players. This paper explores several non-traditional academic library initiatives involving youth service learning and outreach to smaller community groups that might otherwise be ignored by large university libraries.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the emergence of digital reformatting as a technique for preserving information within the cultural heritage preservation community by reviewing historical trends in modern preservation research.

This paper analyzes secondary sources, reviews and historical texts to identify trends in the intellectual and technological histories of preservation research, beginning with the first applications of the scientific method to combating book decay in the early nineteenth to the emergence of digitization techniques in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

This paper identifies five major historical periods in the development of preservation knowledge: the early experimental era; era of microfilm experimentation; era of professionalization; era of digital library research; and the era of digital reformatting and mass digitization; and identifies three major trends in its development: empirical inquiry, standardization and centralization.

Findings reflect broad trends in the field of preservation, primarily in a United States context and are limited to the modern era of preservation research.

This paper's broad historical overview provides a reference for preservation professionals and students in library science or archives programs. Identifying historical trends enables practitioners to critically examine their own preservation techniques and make better decisions when adopting and using new preservation technologies.

This paper provides a unique perspective on the history of preservation knowledge that synthesizes existing historical research in order to identify periods and trends that enable a clearer understanding of digital reformatting in its historical emergence.

The purpose of this study is to highlight the indigenous knowledge systems (IKS) preservation efforts in South Africa, with a focus on the National Recordal System and the Indigenous Knowledge Systems Documentation Centres (IKSDCs) across South Africa.

Anchored in the interpretivist paradigm, the qualitative research approach was adopted to explore the objectives of the study. The multiple case study method was considered appropriate and adopted for the study. The data for this study was collected through comprehensive face-to-face interviews and Web content analysis. The population of the study consisted of the staff at the IKSDCs in the selected academic institutions. The purposive sampling technique was used to select the following set of participants in each academic institution: IKS managers/coordinators, digitization officers and online collection administrators.

The findings provide an in-depth understanding of the IKS landscape in South Africa. The findings and recommendations of this paper would be useful to researchers who wish to know more about digitization efforts in South Africa. It would also be useful to all stakeholders and policymakers.

The paper brings to the fore the efforts of the South African government in preserving IKS through documentation and digitization. The paper highlights the sources of indigenous knowledge, types of indigenous knowledge captured, how the indigenous knowledge is ingested in the repositories and how the data is captured. Generally, the roles of the IKSDCs in the capture and preservation of IKS are highlighted.

This paper aims to provide an overview of developments in digitisation policy and practice at the National Library of Wales (NLW) from 1995 to 2007 and drawing out the lessons learnt.

A chronological overview of developments focusing on the pilot phase, policy statements of 2001 and 2005 and on specific projects that have been undertaken during this period.

Provides a comprehensive view of digitisation at NLW and its evolution over time as well as identifying some key strategic decisions and some important lessons learnt.

This paper aims to outline developments as they occurred at NLW and does not aim to place those developments, or any current or future strategies, in a wider context.

This paper provides the digitisation community with an account of how digitisation was adopted as a core function (at a relatively early stage) by a national repository and can be of value to those still considering implementing digitisation in earnest for the first time or are looking anew at their digitisation strategy.

The purpose of this study is to assess the digital preservation policies and plans for long-term digital preservation in selected repositories in South Africa, with a view to develop a digital preservation framework for the preservation of Indigenous knowledge system (IKS) in South Africa.

Through the multiple case study research design, data was obtained from eight respondents in four Indigenous Knowledge Systems Documentation Centers (IKSDCs) in institutions that are part of the National Recordal Systems (NRS) initiative across four provinces in South Africa using in-depth face-to-face interviews. Data collected was also supplemented with the content analysis of several policy documents in South Africa.

The findings reveal that there are no digital preservation policies in place in the institutions, especially long-term digital preservation for IKS. However, some of the institutions are formulating policies that will include the management of IKS collected in the institutions. This study also reveals that digital curation, policy formulation and disaster preparedness plans to some extent are measures said to be in place for the digital preservation of IKS.

This study focuses mainly on the NRS initiative in South Africa. Indigenous Knowledge (IK) related to traditional medicine, traditional plants and food are currently being digitized at the IKSDCs by IK recorders. This study will help in ensuring that the South African Government’s effort and investment in digitizing IKS and making them accessible online is not wasted. This study will help mitigate the risk of damage and alteration over time, either deliberately or in error.

This study fills a gap in the literature on the digitization and digital preservation of IKS from the context of the NRS project in South Africa. Very few studies have been carried out on the digital preservation of IKS in Africa. This study also proposed a framework for the digital preservation of IKS in South Africa.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate current approaches to assessing digitisation activities in memory institutions.

Qualitative and quantitative analysis of digitisation surveys were performed. Analysis concentrated on several themes: general methodological solutions, digitisation objectives, users and usage of digitised content, budgeting and costs of digitisation, and volume and growth of digitised collections.

Analysis revealed an absence of sound methodology solutions, issues of constructing a sample, the split between strategic and resource management approaches to digitisation, low visibility of user related evaluation criteria, and problems in developing quantitative measures.

Approaches to evaluating digitisation are not restricted to digitisation surveys and to provide a more comprehensive analysis these should be complemented by other data (e.g. interviews of digitisation experts). The identification of surveys was limited by subjective factors such as knowledge of national experts, visibility of reports on the web, and language of publication.

The paper assists in the development of digitisation surveys by highlighting previous gaps and achievements.

The paper is a first attempt to comprehend approaches to monitoring digitisation internationally. Gaps and issues identified in the research can guide studies on developing indicators and measures for specific digitisation activities.

Digitisation, as it will be explored in this issue of VINE, can be defined as the creation of an electronic version of an item such as a text, photograph, slide, illustration, microfilm or map. Combined with the forces of the Internet and CD‐ROM/DVD technology it offers the potential to allow previously inaccessible material to be viewed by fresh eyes and saved for posterity without risk of deterioration by handling or age.