State and Local Archives

Preserve Official Documents

Government agencies, including state and local archives, have increased their search for efficient and cost-effective ways to digitize public records and historical documents. Our wide format scanning and printing experts can help procurement officials from state and local governments obtain the equipment and services they need to adequately scan, archive, and subsequently make digital records, documents, and resources readily and easily available to the public. Our experts can also help officials meet the requirements of state and local laws, statutes, and codes on equipment and service procurement.

State And Local Agencies Guidelines for Digital Documents

The Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative is a collaborative effort by federal agencies formed in 2007 to define common guidelines, practices, and methods to digitize historical content in a sustainable manner. With so much content to cover, the initiative recognized that they would need two separate working groups with different specialized areas of expertise: the Still Image Digitalization Working Group and the Audio-Visual Working Group. Both groups strive to set common benchmarks for digitization service providers and manufacturers. In addition to digital imaging and encoding, guidelines will be developed for the metadata that is embedded in digital image files.

In 2015 a revision of the guidelines expanded on the earlier works from 2010 and incorporated new material that reflects the advances in imaging science and cultural heritage imaging practices.

There has been a strong pull towards involving all government agencies and institutions to join the initiative involved in digitizing all cultural, historical, and archival documents. They strive to begin their work by identifying and prioritizing the most critical areas on which to focus first, such as textual materials, photographs, and maps. This initiative is an ongoing project and new data is continually being published and updated. Individual states have joined this initiative and have set minimal standards and guidelines for digital imaging or scanning.

Resources

www.digitizationguidelines.gov: This is a collaborative effort by federal agencies to define common guidelines, methods, and practices for digitizing historical content. Included are two working groups studying issues specific to two major areas, Still Image and Audio Visual.

www.digitizationguidelines.gov/guidelines/digitize-technical.html: A section of the digitization guidelines, this resource specifically covers the technical guidelines for digitizing cultural heritage materials.

www.loc.gov/preservation/care/scan.html: Preservation guidelines for digitizing library materials from the Library of Congress.

registry.fdlp.gov: The digitization projects registry is designed to capture an inventory of all the digitization projects undertaken by U.S. Government agencies, non-profit organizations, and libraries.

www.clir.org: Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) is an independent nonprofit organization that forges strategies to enhance teaching, learning, and research opportunities in a collaboration with libraries, communities, and cultural institutions.

www.hathitrust.org/usgovdocs_registry: A resource mainly for the library community, government agencies, and other organizations and project staff.