From the Stacks to the Future of Research: Building a Scalable, Sustainable Digitization Program at the University of Maryland

In February 2012, as the new manager of DCMR, I was tasked with revamping the digitization center, increasing production, expanding services throughout the Libraries, and expanding services to include audio and video digitization, in addition to managing digitization projects. After consulting with stakeholders throughout the Libraries, just over one year later, we have expanded our staff, acquired new equipment, are in a new facility, and are testing production-level workflows and standards. Our digitization center is modeled on other, larger digitization centers, but scaled to fit the Libraries’ estimated, near-future needs.

My colleagues and I have also worked to define the separation of digital unit responsibilities between production and preservation, digitization and digital projects. Though DCMR focuses solely on production-based on content-managers’ requests, we maintain a larger focus on overall digital operations. Beyond digitization request orders for patrons, many of the larger projects we undertake frequently include other presentation or digital humanities components. Some of these projects include: the digitization of Katherine Ann Porter’s correspondence to create a digital scholarly edition, in collaboration with various other units and departments; digitizing a collection of Civil War-era letters and diaries that may be used in future classes as education exercises to perform transcription and TEI; and digitizing multiple formats and series of materials throughout a broadcasting collection, providing an extensive picture of the collection for a Special Collections exhibit.