Digitization
Digitization education is one of dLOC's primary goals. To support digitization education, dLOC provides both tools and training. The dLOC Technical and Training teams collaborate, train, and assist all partners. As of September 2009, dLOC has provided more than 14 onsite training visits.
dLOC tools include:
- dLOC Software Toolkit
To aid partners with digitzation and content submission, dLOC has created a
software Toolkit to streamline local workflows and facilitate the creation of
submission packages conformant to dLOC's technical and metadata specifications.
This freely distributed toolkit includes a local database application, a
central tracking application, four secondary applications, a Metadata Template,
a Pre-Quality Control Processor, a Quality Control Application, and the Go
dLOC! FTP client. The dLOC Toolkit was written in C# for use on PCs with
Windows 2000, NT, or XP. dLOC recommends installation on machines with at least
1 GB of RAM for image processing. dLOC makes no warranty or guarantees for the
Toolkit and no support is available for non-members.
- dLOC Digitization Manual
The dLOC Training Manual, available in English, Spanish,
and French, provides in-depth guidance for digitizing documents using
flatbed and high-speed scanners, descriptions of a suggested digitization
workflow, as well as step-by-step instructions for using the dLOC Toolkit software suite.
- Training Videos for Digitization for Preservation
Using a Flatbed Scanner (in dLOC and YouTube)
Metadata
Every item in dLOC is associated, upon submission into the dLOC repository,
with a Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS)
file that describes descriptive, administrative, and structural information
relevant to its display and long-term preservation. dLOC currently utilizes its
own dLOC
METS extension profile. The preferred descriptive metadata standard in
dLOC METS is the MARC-based
Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS).
dLOC can also accomodate descriptive metadata in simple and qualified
Dublin Core, particularly in cases where collections are harvested
using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH).
The dLOC Toolkit also contains a simple, template-based, graphical user
interface designed to automatically generate well-formed
MODS metadata and
METS wrappers from template-based user input.
Digital Preservation: Preserving Caribbean Heritage
In addition to its mission of providing scholars with open access to rare
Caribbean resources, dLOC is also dedicated to the long-term digital
preservation of all materials hosted in its collections. The present need for
such action in the Caribbean is urgent, especially in consideration of the
region's volatile climate, which renders a more traditional approach to
preservation a daunting challenge for even the finest archives and
repositories.
To best assure continued access to at-risk materials, dLOC has formed a
partnership with the University of Florida and the Florida Digital Archive (FDA)
to redundantly back-up the entire dLOC collection in a robust, standards-compliant
preservation software architecture based on the Open Archival Information
System Reference (OAIS)
Model.
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