Digitising your material is a crucial step, but it alone may not be sufficient to fully realise the potential benefits and ensure the long-term preservation and accessibility of your digital assets. The process of digitisation is just the beginning of a broader digital strategy.
Here are some reasons why digitisation alone may not be enough.
Technology and Obsolescence – Digital formats and technologies can become obsolete over time. Organisations need to stay vigilant about changes in technology, regularly assess the sustainability of chosen file formats, and be prepared to migrate content to newer format to prevent obsolescence.
Digital Preservation – Simply creating digital copies does not guarantee their preservation over time.
Digital preservation involves ongoing efforts to protect digital assets from loss, degradation and obsolescence.
Access and Distribution – Mere digitisation does not automatically translate into improved access. Implementing user-friendly interfaces and online platforms is necessary to make digital assets easily accessible to your audience. Access controls, authentication mechanisms and responsive design contribute to a positive user experience.
Metadata and Documentation – Comprehensive and accurate metadata is crucial for understanding the context of digital assets. Simply digitising materials without proper documentation and metadata may result in a lack of context, making it challenging for users to interpret and utilise the digital content effectively.
Quality Assurance – Quality assurance is an ongoing process that ensures the accuracy and completeness of digitised content. Regular checks for data integrity, image quality, and metadata accuracy are necessary to maintain the reliability of digital assets.
While digitisation is a critical first step, it needs to be accompanied by a comprehensive digital strategy that includes, preservation, metadata management, access and distribution planning and ongoing quality assurance. This holistic approach ensures that your digital assets remain accessible, usable, and meaningful over the long term.
DatacomIT plays a pivotal role in assisting clients to develop a digital strategy. We enable our clients to develop and implement digital preservation strategies, from digitisation to ingest, and a framework of managed activities to ensure ongoing preservation and access to content.
Get in touch to find out more about developing a digital preservation plan for your organisation.