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Before contacting potential contractors

Before contractors are even contacted it is a good idea to identify the following. These issues might be defined in a business case for digitisation/outsourcing:

  • the drivers and benefits of digitisation
  • the risks identified
  • the scope, volume and type of material selected for digitisation
  • the condition of the material for digitisation and whether conservation or cleaning is required prior to digitisation
  • the digital formats and quality required
  • stakeholder interests
  • the metadata and documentation required
  • ownership, copyright, privacy and digital rights management issues
  • what quality control and assurance parameters need to be in place
  • insurance requirements for rare or valuable materials
  • financial and human resource issues, including roles/skills of staff in monitoring the digitisation process.
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Before choosing the contractor

Contractors should be assessed carefully. Some questions to ask may include:

  • Can you manage the range of analogue formats we need to digitise?
  • Are you able to provide the required digital formats (including suitable archival formats when required)?
  • Do you have experience in dealing with these materials/formats (and do you have experience in dealing with unique materials)?
  • What are your transportation and materials handling procedures? Is an alternative (for rare, valuable material) to digitise on-site?
  • Are you able to provide the required metadata and documentation?
  • What quality control, treating and assurance measures do you provide? Do you agree to our proposed monitoring process?
  • Are we able to inspect samples of your past work and contact some of your clients? (these should be inspected to determine if of sufficient quality)
  • What are the costs and timeframes involved? Are we protected from paying more if costs exceed expectation? What recourse is there if the timeframes are not met?
  • What backup and disaster recovery arrangements do you have?
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Inclusions in the contract

Contracts should clearly articulate:

  • roles and responsibilities
  • costs, timeframes and expectations: including that if costs are exceeded this is borne by the contractor and recourse if timeframes are exceeded
  • transportation and materials handling requirements (to prevent damage to the originals)
  • the range, type and quantity of material to be digitised
  • the digital formats required, including formats of preservation masters (unenhanced) and any enhanced copies or access copies required
  • specifications regarding the use of compression (which, if used, should be lossless for archival records)
  • additional specifications e.g. sampling, bit rate
  • the testing and quality control and assurance procedures to be used by the contractor
  • the agreed process of monitoring and quality control and assurance by the organisation
  • the metadata and documentation requirements
  • where ownership of all materials lies (e.g that ownership of originals and all copies resides with the State)
  • arrangements for the return of the analogue and digital recordings to the organisation
  • backup and disaster recovery arrangements.

Published January 2009

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