Industry Canada is helping organizations realize this potential through Canada’s Digital Collections (CDC) program.

The program is designed to aid young Canadians in developing both entrepreneurial and technological skills, focusing both on youth who have left school, on students seeking employment to fund their education and on recent graduates seeking work experience.

The process of creating the electronic version can be broken down into five stages:

1. Identification—identifying a collection or resource to be digitized
2. Digitization—the existing resource is converted to electronic format
3. Processing—the electronic document is "cleaned up"
4. Preservation—the electronic resource is stored on a disk or hard drive
5. Display—the new electronic resource is set up for display and/or retrieval

Digital content can be created using different methods:

• an existing resource can be converted to electronic format
• an existing electronic resource can be manipulated or expanded

A digital project can consist of either one or a combination of these methods.

The Canada’s Digital Collections program is designed to train young Canadians as they transfer existing collections into digital form to be made available on the Internet. Industry Canada contracts with project managers (e.g., Canadian libraries, archives, museums, etc.) to manage teams of youth in the production of these digital collections.

Keep in mind that, even if the original collection is housed in several locations, the nature of the Internet makes the gathering together of this information into a single source uniquely possible. Industry Canada encourages partnering among organizations to create digital collections.

• text
• images
• photographs of physical objects
• sounds
• database or index
• video images*

* Though proposals including video images will be considered, CDC does not recommend using video images, which tend to create large files and may present difficulties of transmission over the Internet.

Keep in mind when submitting a proposal that any of these elements may contribute to a collection, but the materials should be organized in such a way that they tell a story of local, regional, or national significance.

• the collection is in fragile condition
• the collection is valuable or rare
• the collection is an in-demand special resource not readily available elsewhere
• the collection reflects some area of expertise or specialty at your institution or in your region
• there are restricted hours of access to the collection
• restricted hours affect users who cannot easily get to the library or archives
• a large population of users cannot get to the library or archives to make use of the collection

• What hardware and software is currently available for the project?
• Will the existing configuration handle the material to be digitized?
• If not, what additional hardware or software is needed?

• Is an Internet connection necessary?
• Is a LAN (Local Area Network) required?

• manual keying of data—requires minimal hardware and software, but this process is very slow, time consuming, labour intensive, and costly. Manual keying of data will not suffice if you have images or sounds you want to digitize.
• document imaging—a scanner creates a digital image of a document, and stores the image as a graphic. This process works well for both images and text, but text cannot be edited or searched once it is stored as an image.
• optical character recognition (OCR)—a scanner creates a digital image of a document and special software converts each element on the page to digital text. The advantage of OCR is that text can later be indexed and searched.
• sounds—using a microphone or direct audio input and special software, you can record sounds and encode them as wav, RealAudio or another sound file format.

Digitizing can be done on both Macintosh and PC systems. While faster, newer machines will perform better and make your project more productive, it is possible to use 486 computers effectively. Scanner software will work with a 386 processor and 4 MB RAM, but this is not recommended for projects requiring a high volume of scanning. A Pentium 75 MHz PC or equivalent Macintosh is highly recommended for scanning.

HTML work can be accomplished on a 386 or higher PC or equivalent Mac. If you choose to use a 386 for HTML work, choose your editing program with some consideration. Some HTML editors require higher-end systems in order to function efficiently.

8 MB RAM is the absolute minimum for scanning software to function. However, image manipulation, in general, and OCR, in particular, require a lot of memory: ideally, the machine used for scanning and OCR would have a minimum of 16 MB RAM (32 MB recommended).

Scanner packages recommend anywhere from 6–20 MB available disk space; additionally, images and files will need to be stored and backed up locally prior to uploading to the server. Make sure all computers have ample free disk space.

A 1.0 GB hard drive is recommended for machines used for scanning.

A 14.4 bps modem is the minimal requirement; 28.8 bps is recommended for transferring to the server the large number of files your project will generate. If you do not have a LAN, it is advantageous to have more than one modem to ensure that the process of uploading files is efficient, and so that all students have the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the Internet and Internet software.

Although you can get by with older computers, modems, etc., keep in mind that the quality of your scanner will determine the quality of images you produce. If a significant portion of your collection is images, get a good scanner. A quality flatbed scanner is crucial for OCR and for scanning images. Hand-held scanners are difficult to master and may require several passes of larger documents to create a single image. Make sure that the scanner is supported by the OCR software you select.

Your scanner will require a device driver (usually included in the scanner software), and a SCSI card and cable. Make sure the SCSI card is appropriate for your scanner.

Although you can certainly run a digitizing project on stand-alone computers and without a local area network, it is far more convenient to have a network. OCR and imaging can produce large files that are not easily moved from machine to machine. In the case where you have one scanner and you need to move the files to other machines to manipulate and work on them, a local area network is very helpful.

If your project includes digitization of sounds, you may need to upgrade your existing system with a multimedia package.

Your team will need WWW browsers, such as Netscape and Internet Explorer, both to familiarize themselves with websites and archival resources on the WWW, and to preview their own documents. It is highly recommended that completed pages are also previewed on a text-only browser, such as Lynx, to ensure ease of use and navigability for users who do not have access to graphical browsers. Every machine being used for development should have browser software installed.

Ftp software such as WS-FTP (Windows) or Fetch (Macintosh) should be installed on every machine that has a modem.

Team members will communicate with CDC staff and technical support people largely via e-mail. E-mail will also be essential if members of your team are working in different physical locations, or if some members are working independently. There are many acceptable e-mail programs available.

There are many programs available for creating HTML documents (many can be downloaded as freeware or shareware). The program you choose depends on your needs. Netscape Navigator Gold comes packaged with a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML editor. This package can be useful; keep in mind that sound understanding of HTML is a valuable skill even for this type of editor. (The Navigator Gold editor works best with more than 8 MB of RAM.) Other good WYSIWYG software includes Claris Homepage and Adobe PageMill. A reasonably priced HTML editor is HotDog Pro, a software package that can be downloaded from the Internet.

Make sure the scanner software you purchase is suitable for your scanner. Usually, a scanner is shipped with appropriate software.

While there are many packages for image manipulation, many teams use Paintshop Pro, a low-budget shareware program that can save images files in formats suitable for the Internet. Adobe Photoshop is an excellent software package for image manipulation and runs on either Macintosh or IBM computers. Another good paint program is Corel Photo-Paint. CorelDraw 6 and Adobe Illustrator are both excellent vector editors.

There is a wide range of OCR software available. Two popular packages include Textbridge Pro and OmniPage Pro. The Pro versions of these packages often have more features than the "lite" versions. Particularly useful in the Pro versions is a "batch" mode that allows the convenience of scanning a series of pages and performing the OCR in a batch at a later time.

For digitizing sound, the desired quality will be critical in determining the package you select. Often, the audio card with your computer will come with some basic software for capturing a phrase or two. Sound Forge (for Windows) is one package that some audio archiving projects have used.

For most projects, a dial-up account with a modem will work. Keep in mind that it will take a number of hours to move your files to the server, especially if you are creating a large number of image files.

If your staff has little or no experience with digital projects and a very basic knowledge of the Internet, you will need expertise to train and guide your project team. Your staff will have expertise in terms of your collection and subject matter, and pairing up with a local multimedia consulting firm is a good solution for providing the technical expertise required. Additionally, hiring team members with computer experience will minimize the amount of support and training needed.

Small libraries and archives, in particular, should plan so that the project does not take over the entire staff’s working hours. Careful planning can keep your commitment to between one-half and a full day per week.

The role of the library or the archive is primarily as custodian of the content. The most important role you can play is to ensure that the team of young people understands the content and the tasks to be completed.

A number of team structures will work effectively. Your team may work as peers, or you may choose to designate a project manager. Regardless of whether you designate a project manager, it is vital that one person document and keep track of the materials, status of the project, filenames, etc. It is recommended that you consider designating a project manager, as this simple step at the outset of your project can ensure careful monitoring of the work, time lines and quality control through its duration.

• Provide physical space
• Provide day-to-day project supervision: ensure the team is present and productive
• Provide collection to be digitized
• Provide expertise on content
• Provide extracted database records, or train students to extract database records as required
• Provide computers and scanner
• Assist in purchasing software
• Review site, proofread, and sign off content

• Consult on overall project design
• Recommend work flow
• Establish benchmarks for digitizing
• Core training of basic skills: Internet basics, basics of design, scanning, image manipulation, OCR, HTML, ftp
• Supervise and guide programmers on parsing text; creating database design; loading data to a database; writing the Web-to-database queries
• Consult on design of site; you may wish to hire the firm to provide professional graphic design of home page elements, such as backgrounds, buttons, additional images, and logos
• Review site and sign off technical work

• Organize the team and supervise members
• Prepare reports
• Monitor time lines and quality control
• Communicate with other partners
• Ensure that content is available, organized, and that copyright is upheld
• Ensure overall site development

• Help set up hardware and software
• Serve as resource to the team
• May take the product produced by other team members and create an on-line database, develop indexes or search tools as needed

• Work with Project Manager on content and digitization
• Participate in site development
• Perform scanning and OCR
• Perform HTML
• Assist in developing databases, indexes, or search tools as needed
• Upload the collection files to server

A very general guideline for inexperienced staff digitizing and creating WWW pages is that approximately 2 pages of text can be designed, OCR’d, proofed, converted to HTML, and uploaded per worker per day (this estimate includes training).

Another good rule of thumb is that an average of 5 images per worker per hour can be digitized and enhanced. However, keep in mind that image maps, complex design and layout, complex indexes, databases, etc., will reduce the number of items you can expect to scan and the overall size of the site you can expect by the project completion date.

• Introduction to and overview of creating digital content
• Training on basic Internet skills (e-mail, ftp, World Wide Web)
• May require training in basic computer skills: using Windows or Mac
• Storyboarding or content organization
• Scanning software and hardware
• Image manipulation
• OCR (Optical Character Recognition) software
• HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and HTML editing software

If your project includes a database, team members may require specialized training, such as using database programs, or learning perl and mSQL

In the rush to get a project up and moving, it is easy to overlook the big picture. What is the story or theme of your site? What are you trying to convey to the people who visit the site? By creating a storyboard, you will be able to describe clearly to the project team what their tasks are. This storyboard will guide them in all levels of the project, from graphic design, to page layout, to determining searchable fields in a database. The story you tell will determine the overall organization of your website.

Most libraries and archives have specialized collections of photographs, manuscripts, monographs, articles and other materials. It is tempting to believe the collection is of such importance that a project to sequentially scan an entire set of materials and put them on the Web will be useful. The intent of the CDC program is to put up materials on about Canada and of interest to the general public. It is imperative to provide context and overview and some background materials to demonstrate why these materials are of interest and how they might be used.

One important factor in determining your storyboard is whether you have the resources to keep adding to the site once the CDC project is completed. If so, you need to plan and organize the site to allow for maintenance. If you are not planning to continue adding to the site, take care in creating links to other websites as these will change frequently.

The CDC Design Guidelines provide a useful reference for the storyboarding and design of your website. The purpose of these guidelines is to define the site structure, site look & feel, page content, credit and graphics requirements for all CDC projects.

Libraries and archives also benefit from the acquisition of new technological and managerial skills; the forging of new partnerships at local, regional, and national levels; and the opportunity to be creative and innovative in a time of severe fiscal restraint. Most important, the enhancements to our services and our collections afforded by Canada’s Digital Collections program ultimately can only benefit our users.