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Lessons in outsourcing: Creating in-house digitisation infrastructure in Jewish heritage organisations
Journal of Digital Media Management,
11
(4),
334-340
(2023)
Abstract
The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research recently completed a multi-year project to digitise and make accessible online approximately 4.1 million pages of books and archival materials, pertaining to all aspects of Jewish life in Eastern Europe, which the organisation had collected in the period from 1925 until 1939. Initially, YIVO retained a corporate scanning vendor to handle digitisation and post-production work, but pivoted to opening an in-house digitisation lab to control rising costs and ensure ontime completion at the end of 2021. This paper discusses the reasons for choosing a corporate vendor, the factors that prompted the shift to opening an in-house lab, and the outcomes from successfully completing the project, especially in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Keywords: Jewish heritage; digitisation workflow; digital preservation; quality assurance; training
The full article is available to subscribers to the journal.
Author's Biography
Devora Geller is the Digital Preservation Manager at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, where she supervises digitisation and post-digitisation workflows, guides digital preservation initiatives, and plans the execution of digital projects at YIVO and beyond. She earned her PhD in musicology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where she wrote a dissertation about Jewish-American immigrant music in the early 20th century.
Jill Strykowski is the cataloguing and metadata lead at San José State University, where she works to improve collections maintenance and metadata practice. She also serves as Chair of the Resource Management Functional Committee for the California State University’s Unified Library Management System, guiding cataloguing practice across the whole university system. Jill has a rich background in library cataloguing and metadata work with a focus on project management for special libraries and archives. She graduated with honours from the University of Southern California, and in 2011 obtained master’s degrees in both library and information science (an MSLIS from Long Island University) and in archives and public history (an MA from New York University).
