Digitization of Materials

Digitization Resources

Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative, Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Cultural Heritage materials - FADGI is a collaborative effort started in 2007 by federal agencies to articulate common sustainable practices and guidelines for digitized and born digital historical, archival and cultural content.

Digital Library Federation's Digitization Cost Calculator - Input parameters and the calculator will produce an estimate of time and costs for each process of your digitization project.

Digital Public Library of America Self-Guided Curriculum for Digitization

File Naming Tips

Use underscores, hyphens or capital letters to differentiate between words in the file. Do not use spaces or special characters > < * ? = \ / |
Keep file names concise and use meaningful abbreviations
Order elements from general to specific and consider how the files may sort in a directory.
Record dates YYYYMMDD

File Formats

The Randall Library Digitization Unit primarily creates TIFFs as the original master file and generates access files, JPEG and PDF. We also work with audio, video, and many other file formats.

Many types of projects require converting analog material to digital formats. We have expertise in digitization and are knowledgeable in digitization standards.

Where can you scan in Randall Library?

There are 4 scanners in the Learning Commons, and additional scanners by the TAC, freely available for student, faculty, and staff use. These scanners are each connected to computers allowing you to save, print and edit your scans.

You can also use these self-service scanners

Epson Expression 11000XL- Photo Scanner -- coming soon
KIC Bookeye Scanner
ScanPro 2000

Suggested Digitization Specifications

Media Type	Digitization Specifications
Books/Typed Pages (≥5”x8”) Smaller sized books (<5”x8”)	300 ppi, 24-bit RGB color 450 ppi, 24-bit RGB color
Manuscripts/handwritten documents (≥8”x10”) Smaller sized manuscripts (<8”x10”)	300 ppi, 24-bit RGB color 600 ppi, 24-bit RGB color
Photographs	600 ppi, 24-bit RGB color
Slides (black and white)	2400 ppi for 35mm slides, 16-bit grayscale
Slides (color)	2400 ppi for 35mm slides, 24-bit RGB color
Film Negatives or Transparencies (black and white)	2400 ppi for 35mm film, 16-bit grayscale 800 ppi for 4”x5” originals, 16-bit grayscale
Film Negatives or Transparencies (color)	2400 ppi for 35mm film, 24-bit RGB color 800 ppi for 4”x5” originals, 24-bit RGB color