Earlier this month, we quietly released a book. Seems counter-intuitive, right? Why quietly release a book? Well, we realize it's summertime, and a lot of people are thinking about more important things right now than digitization projects in libraries (not all of you, of course). Plus we figure this book will benefit from a marathon approach to getting the word out. After all, it's not a book you're going to pick up and read cover to cover. Rather, we hope it's a valuable reference-type resource for practitioners, students, and anyone else interested in learning how libraries, archives, museums, cultural heritage institutions, and consortia go about digitizing their collections when they don't have huge piles of money lying around or Google knocking down their door to digitize everything.
So we've created a site to share one chapter a week from the book for the next handful of months. We've already posted four chapters -- one from each of the main four sections of the book -- and we'll keep doing so every week until the entire book is online. Each post contains an online excerpt, a list of references, and a link to the full PDF version of the chapter.
People less savvy than yourself will immediately think, "why would they give away a book they're trying to sell?" Well, we know people will support projects they find useful to encourage more work like it. If you like what you see in these four chapters, keep your eye on the Digitization in the Real World site, and consider picking up a copy of the book. In the meantime, here's what you might have missed so far:
DIY Digitization: Creating a Small-Scale Digital Zine Exhibit
from the section: "Small is Beautiful: Planning and Implementing Digitization Projects with Limited Resources"
Managing Rights in a Medium-Scale Audio Digitization Project
from the section: "A Diverse Digital Landscape: Digital Collections in Public Libraries, Museums, Cultural Heritage Institutions, and Knowledge-Based Organizations"
Developing an Institutional Repository at Southern New Hampshire University: Year One
from the section: "The Digital Campus: Digitization in Universities and Their Libraries"
Digital Treasures: The Evolution of a Digital Repository in Massachusetts
From the section: "One Plus One is Greater Than Two: Collaborative Projects"
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