final project: digitization grant II

Whew.  The first draft is done.

Well, maybe done except for the budget narrative.  But I'll tackle that this week.

final project: digitization grant

For my final project, I am working away writing a mock digitization grant for a South Carolina library.  I am using the guidelines for the National Historical Publications and and Records Commission: Digitizing Historical Records grant.  I choose this grant for a couple of reasons: 1) it dealt specifically with digitizing historical artifacts, 2) it allowed public libraries to receive funding, and 3) as a national granting institution, I wanted to gain experience following guidelines that I might need to follow when writing a real grant.

I am currently working on the Purposes and Goals of the Project section, which will probably be the longest section to write but might not be the most time consuming section of the entire grant.  It is my goal to write about 500 words a day on the grant so it is fleshing out pretty quickly.

The mock grant is being written for the Richland County Public Library for the digitization of two made up collections that contain documents, journals, correspondence, and photographs focusing on Columbia, South Carolina during the Civil War.  In the beginning, making up collections to include in the grant appeared easy.  Once I began filling out basic information about what I wanted to be included in the collection, the process became much harder.  I have to ask myself how many photographs could realistically have survived all the years about the Civil War, what sort of topics would be interesting to national scholars on the Civil War yet still might be reasonably donated to a public library, and what topics may have been documented by people at the time.  Once I made some general discussions, I then had to come up with ways that this collection would be significant to scholarship on the Civil War in general.

my history of digitization

Is it possible for there to be a zero of history?  History suggests such a continuum; there is always something that has happened before, and something that has happened before that something.  


I have a zero history of digitization.  I have never owned a scanner.  The only time I have scanned an artifact would be when scanning signed IRB documents for my research.  Would that be considered digitizing for access?  The point is so my colleagues can see them.  But the original and scanned copy will be destroyed within a few months.  The fact that they will be annihilated in the near future makes me believe they do not count.


So my official history of digitization began with class day one.  When I digitized a piece of paper from Jessica's Texas Exes cookbook.  Bam!  Then a digitizationathon!  


My digitization skills are growing exponentially.  


So why take Survey of Digitization?  Because of all the digital things.
There are many digital things.  Fact.  
Public libraries deal with digital things.  Yes. 


I want to be able to create new digital artifacts.  I want to know what to do with digital artifacts that others give me professionally to make sure they are all in tip top shape.  I see the public library becoming more and more digital (why does it surprise non-info sci people when I say this?) and I want to be knowledgeable in as many aspects of what that may mean as possible. 


Non-professionally and Non-class work related...I want to digitize my grandmother's cookbook for my mom.  So I'm going to be doing that later in the semester if I can convince my mom to let me have the cookbook for any length of time.