Guidelines for Digitizing Manuscripts and Photos

Genealogists have benefited from the proliferation of digital images by the billions of such images have gone online of historically and genealogically significant documents and records. However, individual efforts to digitize our own collections sometimes result in less than acceptable images. Obviously, the genealogist who digitizes a family record or photograph is limited by the quality of the original, but there are definite and widely available guidelines for the best practices in digitizing both from an institutional and personal standpoint.

I have compiled a list of websites that address the issues of providing guidelines for digital collections. If you examine some or all of these websites, you will see that they come from a variety of disciplines. Some come from the academic community and others are more commercial in nature, but they all provide their unique perspective on the best practices and most agree in the basic methods. You might also observe that the recommended practices have changed somewhat over the past few years as technology has become more advanced.

Here is the list.

“Best Practices and Planning for Digitization Projects,” April 15, 2013. https://www.webjunction.org/documents/webjunction/Best_Practices_and_Planning_for_Digitization_Projects.html.

“Best Practices for Digitization | Minnesota Digital Library.” Accessed October 17, 2016. https://mndigital.org/standards-best-practices/best-practices-digitization.

“cdl_gdi_v2.pdf.” Accessed October 17, 2016. http://www.cdlib.org/services/access_publishing/dsc/contribute/docs/cdl_gdi_v2.pdf.

“Digital File Creation: Standards and Best Practices for Saving Images [Tutorial] | The Sustainable Heritage Network.” Accessed October 17, 2016. http://sustainableheritagenetwork.org/digital-heritage/digital-file-creation-standards-and-best-practices-saving-images-tutorial.

“Good and Best Practices for Making Digital Images.” Accessed October 17, 2016. http://archivehistory.jeksite.org/chapters/chapter2.htm.

“Guidelines for Best Practices in Image Processing.” Accessed October 17, 2016. http://ori.hhs.gov/education/products/RIandImages/guidelines/list.html.

“Guidelines_for_images.pdf.” Accessed October 17, 2016. https://www.carli.illinois.edu/sites/files/digital_collections/documentation/guidelines_for_images.pdf.

“hal_mhc_rms_bp_for_digitizing_125527_7.pdf.” Accessed October 17, 2016. https://www.michigan.gov/documents/hal_mhc_rms_bp_for_digitizing_125527_7.pdf.

“IDA_Best_Practices.pdf.” Accessed October 17, 2016. http://www.finditillinois.org/ida/digital-imaging/IDA_Best_Practices.pdf.

“Images-Best_Practice.pdf.” Accessed October 17, 2016. https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/40247/Images-Best_Practice.pdf;jsessionid=F66E09F9FDA601BA08A5543CF33CDD61?sequence=1.

“Best Practices.” Accessed October 17, 2016. https://www.webjunction.org/documents/webjunction/Best_Practices_and_Planning_for_Digitization_Projects.html.