The Worth of Digitization
In my last post on digitization, I discussed how digital content helps us to bridge the digital divide and secure digital dividends in the process. Today, I would like to get deeper into the world of digitization and explore the issues related to this domain.“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Truly, technology has taken us so far that we can now see those things, which were initially invisible to us, hear things, which were once beyond our audio senses, and look forward to new possibilities in the near future.
Digitization is one such technology that endeavors to provide meaningful content on human culture, science, and art to all e-citizens. The world’s libraries, museums, and archives are tremendous sources of knowledge, much of which has never seen the light of the day. As Tagore puts it “…Where knowledge is free…into that heaven of freedom my father, let my country awake” – digitization helps you get in touch with the treasure hidden inside the sources of knowledge.
Before proceeding any further in this context, I must explain what I mean by the term, digitization. In a single phrase, we can define digitization as the conversion of analog media to digital form. However, digitization in itself has many facets - the source material can be printed text, images, audio, or video.
With the digital content industry gaining pace with every new second, the possibilities seem endless, the advantages become clearly visible, and the pressure of using this new technology for preservation purposes is increasing at a brisk pace. However, when it comes to digitizing organizational data for preservation purpose, ‘accuracy’ is the word and implementation of state-of-the-art digitization technologies, such as Optical Character Recognition (OCR), double-entry capture, and computerized data verification becomes a must.
The accuracy factor notwithstanding, there are some other issues as well that must be considered before venturing into the digitization sea with full-fledged resources. You need to consider:
· The purpose of the digitization project, whether it is for preservation, access improvement, or both.
· The scope of accessibility of the digitized products.
· The desired format of the final output.
As if the above impediments were not enough, after becoming clear about the expectations from the digitization project, you need to decide whether digitization is really worth it? I mean, you need to perform a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether the digitization process positively influences the Return on Investment (ROI). The need for this cost-benefit analysis arises because you have to face the choice between launching a digitization project and investing on other activities, such as traditional collection development.
The fact that makes this cost-benefit analysis process even more difficult is that the number of caveats and variables that must be taken into account is bewildering and at the same time, there is no guarantee that these variables reflect the true cost of the project. However, as an answer to these difficulties, there are several benefits, which make digitization worth it. Increasing access, preservation, and meeting strategic goals are just a few benefits to name with respect to digitization.
So, deciding the worthiness of a digitization project is a tough task and it all depends on how well you can compare digitization with other areas of collection development that may yield better results – always keeping in mind that the primary objective is to meet the requirements of the users and provide them with the resources indispensable for them.
posted by navneet biet @ 11:08 PM
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