Building Digital Archives with Minimal Staffing, Day 1

Building Digital Archives with Minimal Staffing, Day 1

Wednesday, May 14, 2025 - 1:00pm to 4:00pm

Digitization can help bring your archival materials to life by making them accessible and easy to use in a variety of projects and settings. There are many reasons to start digitizing your institution’s holdings, and likely just as many stakeholders who want an institution's archival materials digitized. If you do not have a digitization department, this work can seem daunting—even if you do have a digitization department, you might have good reasons to supplement their output. This webinar will cover getting started on digitization projects in the archives when you do not have many resources.

We will cover equipment recommendations, digitization workflows, metadata, and platforms and tools for managing, accessing, and working with digitized or born digital materials. During the webinar we will discuss advocating for resources, project planning, and documentation, along with demonstrations and time for hands-on exploration of several content management systems.

This two-day webinar will be held on May 14 and May 15, 2025 from 1:00-4:00 p.m. (CDT) on each day. All sessions will be recorded. Here are the session descriptions for May 15, 2025.

Attendees are invited to join all the sessions or those that interest them. Registration is required. Please use the registration link at the bottom of this page. Register once for both days.

All times noted are Central Daylight Time.

May 14, 2025:

1:00 p.m. -
1:05 p.m.

Welcome and Introduction

1:05 p.m. -
2:30 p.m.

Session Title: Equipment Recommendations, Pricing, Scanning, and Post Processing

This session will focus on having one student or one staff person available and then scaling up according to needs/available resources including:

  • Basics of getting started
  • Image standards
  • Making the most of your available labor, budget, and other resources
  • Post processing, including but not limited to
    • File management
    • Naming conventions
    • Standardization/normalization
    • OCR/transcription
    • QC procedures

Presenters: Karmine Beecroft, Illinois State University and Ellie Harman, Illinois State University
2:30 p.m. -
2:40 p.m.

Break

2:40 p.m. -
3:15 p.m.

Session Title: Metadata

This session will include a basic overview of metadata elements; what minimal metadata can look like; a discussion of providing access as opposed to perfection in item-level description, and digital rights statements.

Presenters: Rebecca Fitzsimmons, Illinois State University and Ashley Howdeshell, Northeastern Illinois University
3:15 p.m. -
3:25 p.m.

Break

3:25 p.m. -
3:50 p.m.

Session Title: Digital Preservation

This session will include a basic overview of minimal, realistic digital preservation; the importance of a workflow; and resources for where to find more information.

Presenter: Marcella Lees, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
3:50 p.m. -
4:00 p.m.		 Wrap-Up

Register to attend.

Sponsored by the CARLI Archives Task Force.