This class will discuss best practices and current issues in digitizing rare books. The instructor will cover scanning and specialized equipment; post-process and digital authenticity; the need for specific metadata description; and the publication of digital rare book collections. A discussion of common types of rare books and their handling needs, along with third party digitization agreements and donor stipulations, will be included. Finally, we’ll cover how to build dazzling and significant rare book-based digital collections, over time.
This class will not cover basic digital collections workflows and procedures and this class will not be a full primer for the handling of rare books; a basic understanding of these is required for full participation in this class.
Learning Outcomes
At the end of the session, participants should be able to:
Identify and choose rare books for digitization
Digitize and describe rare books with professional confidence
Organize and develop rare book digital collections
Instructor: Megan A. Oliver
Megan A. Oliver is a three-time graduate of the University of South Florida (Master of Science in Library in Information Science; Bachelor of Arts in English Literature; Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology). After graduating from USF in 2011, Megan has worked as the Assistant Librarian at Florida State University’s Ringling Museum Library and as the Digital Collections Curator at State University of New York’s Purchase College. She currently works as the Digital Collections Librarian at the University of South Carolina (UofSC) Libraries and as an adjunct at the iSchool, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests are ethics in informatics and labor practice, the creation of sustainable digital products and services, and UX research in digital librarianship.
