Digital Project Development Process

this file last updated: 11/2005

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Introduction

The University of Wisconsin Libraries support the creation of digital resources in a distributed environment. In order to provide adequate resources for these efforts, we follow a well-honed project development process to identify, quantify and review requirements for projects intended for inclusion in our digital collections.

The digital project development process consists of a series of steps, culminating in a brief Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between content providers and the UWDCC which outlines the project scope, timeline, and deliverables. These steps are presented below. For more information about this project development process, contact the UWDCC at digitalcontent@library.wisc.edu.

Definitions

Content Provider:

The person responsible for selecting materials, developing a project idea, providing contextual and other information related to project development and management.

The University of Wisconsin Digital Collections Center (UWDCC):

This group is responsible for helping the Content Provider develop project ideas, guide the project proposal through the approval process, manage the digital reformatting and metadata creation, manage the digitized materials over the long term, and make these materials available through online content management systems. The UWDCC works with digital project owners on campus and throughout the UW System and is responsible for the reformatting of materials and for the metadata and encoding required to access materials in a digital environment. UWDCC staff also serves as a liaison between the project owner and the Library Technology Group (LTG), which handles the technical aspects of making projects available online.

Library Technology Group (LTG):

The LTG develops the architecture underpinning the indexing, delivery, and discovery of the UWDC resources, including the indexing and search functions, and their interfaces.

The University of Wisconsin Digital Collections (UWDC):

The Council of Wisconsin Libraries and UW System's Office of Learning & Information Technology established the UWDC in 2001 to provide quality digital resources from its academic libraries to UW faculty, staff and students, citizens of the state, and scholars at large.

Phase 1: Pre-Production

1. Submit a Project Proposal

   Use our Web form to suggest a project idea. UWDCC will respond to your inquiry as soon as possible.

2. Project Questionnaire:

   Once we've received your project idea, we may set up a meeting to discuss your idea and assess the materials you intend to digitize. At this meeting, we will complete a Project Questionnaire. This form will provide the UWDCC with basic information necessary to begin developing a project workflow and timeline. UWDCC staff will assist you in completing this form, if necessary. If a meeting is not required, we will ask you to fill out this form and submit it to us via email.

3. Technical Assessment:

   If the project information presented through the Project Questionnaire is sufficient to proceed, you will be asked to work with UWDCC staff to complete a more detailed Technical Assessment of your project materials, in order to discern staff and hardware resources necessary to complete the project. This detailed information will help inform content delivery options, capture methods, encoding and metadata description levels, maintenance, budgeting and other project criteria.

4. Committee(s) Review:

   Once the Technical Assessment is finished, UWDCC staff will complete a Project Brief. The Project Brief contains a cost estimate and information gathered through your Project Questionnaire and Technical Assessments. The Project Brief is then forwarded to the appropriate steering committees and will be used to review and approve your project.

   Types of Projects Eligible for Funding:  †

   • Library collections that are aimed at direct classroom application with value beyond a specific campus. Significant faculty involvement as active agents throughout all stages of the project.
   • Faculty–supplied collections that have significant instructional or research interest. Faculty editorship.
   • Library collections that have a history of high to moderate use and are of general academic value. Library collection development expertise with faculty review and support desirable.
   • Library collections (or faculty collections) that are distinctive and have the potential for academic use and general education (K-12) interest. Library collection development expertise with faculty review and support desirable.
   • Library collections that contain rare and/or fragile materials that have educational or research interest. Faculty review and support desirable

   † The committee assumes:

   1. "Collection" can mean a specific collection such as the Foreign Relations Papers or a theme–collection such as the Pioneer Experience where materials are drawn from multiple places;
   2. the intended audience for the UWDC can include "…UW faculty, staff and students, citizens of the state, and scholars at large"
   3. "Only projects endorsed by a UW library will be considered"
5. Memo of Understanding (MOU):

   If your project is approved by the steering committees, the Project Briefs, Technical Assessment and Cost Estimate forms will be used to derive a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that details project participants and explicitly states their respective responsibilities for project management, content selection, reformatting, description, delivery, and maintenance of the deliverables outlined in your proposal. Once the terms of this memo have been agreed upon, signed, and returned to UWDCC, your project will be assigned a priority code and production phases will be scheduled. At this point, your project will be queued for production.

Phase 2: Production

1. Materials Transfer and Inventory:

   UWDCC staff will coordinate transfer of project materials to the UWDCC office, located at 431 Memorial Library. Materials will be inventoried and stored according to criteria documented in the Technical Assessment.

2. Reformatting, Description, Indexing and/or Infrastructure Development:

   Project staff will begin your project. This production work may include the reformatting of materials, creating appropriate metadata records, indexing the project files and/or developing any additional delivery or Web infrastructure agreed to in the MOU.

3. Quality Control and Testing:

   UWDCC staff and the content provider(s) collaborate to ensure the integrity of the project content and delivery systems. Typically, corrections are needed — once all corrections have been made the project can be moved into production.

4. Final Review:

   The content provider will be asked to complete a final review of their digitized resource, prior to public release.

Phase 3: Post-Production and Promotion

Once all deliverables documented in the MOU have been met, your project will be moved into production, at which point it is available online to the general public. Procedures for moving projects into production are as follows:

1. UWDCC staff will add the project to the UWDC collections web site, located at http://uwdc.library.wisc.edu/collections.html.
2. UW Madison's Central Technical Services will catalog the collection in Madison's local OPAC, called MadCat, and WorldCat. Note: Each UW campus should develop its own procedures for adding new projects to their local web sites and OPACs.
3. Once the new resource is available in production, content providers are encouraged to promote the resource to appropriate audiences and are responsible for any additional outreach activities.

Additional Information

1. Project ideas must have the support of a library director (or designee) to be considered. The UWDCSC/DSC weighs various criteria in determining which projects to fund and/or develop.
2. It is important to understand at the outset that any digital project will require a significant allocation of staff and infrastructural resources. Thus, not every project proposal will be approved.
3. For approved projects, the UWDCC will work to ensure projects are completed in an efficient and timely manner. The UWDCSC/DSC applies professional standards related to reformatting, description, and delivery models whenever possible. Use of professionally endorsed library/archives standards (e.g. Dublin Core metadata) renders a digital project compatible with other collections included in the library's digital collections.
4. The UWDCC offers delivery options and models for creating, describing and delivering both text-based (e.g. books, journals, correspondence, etc.) and multimedia (e.g. images, audio, video, etc.) materials via the Internet. Review these options for a better understanding of our content management systems and how your project materials may fit within our current infrastructure.