Digitization in the Real World: Lessons Learned from Small to Medium-Sized Digitization Projects
The Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) is pleased to announce a call to participate in a forthcoming book, tentatively titled Digitization in the Real World: Lessons Learned from Small to Medium-Sized Digitization Projects. This book is intended to document experiences with digitization projects that fall outside the spectrum of mass digitization initiatives that have tended to be more thoroughly discussed and documented. Digitization in the Real World will be co-edited by Professor Kwong Bor Ng (Queens College, CUNY) and Jason Kucsma (METRO).
Your experiences will provide useful case studies on what works and what does not for libraries, archives, museums and other cultural heritage organizations managing small- to medium-sized collections. Librarians, archivists, and students stand to benefit from your experiences — learning about the how the key elements of digitization projects play out in diverse institutional contexts. How was your project started? How was it implemented? What organizational and technological obstacles were encountered, and how were they overcome? Were they overcome? What new solutions did your project implement, and were those experiments successful or not? What are some of the lessons learned from your project? Is your project still growing? If not, why?
The scope of these case studies will inherently diverge, and we encourage that diversity. A book that candidly discusses your projects will be of great value to other libraries, archives, museums, cultural institutions, and graduate school students in library science and archives programs.
If you’d like to participate, please submit the following information via email on or before August 31, 2009.
Name:
Email:
Institution:
Chapter Abstract: 500-1000 words describing the scope of your project and key elements you intend to address in your chapter.
Should your proposal be accepted, you will be notified by September 21, 2009 with chapter guidelines and editorial suggestions. The final chapter would be due on December 14, 2009, upon which it will be sent for double-blind peer review. The book is scheduled to be published by METRO, and you will, of course, receive a copy of the book.
CONTACT:
Jason Kucsma
Emerging Technologies Manager, METRO
jkucsma_at_metro.org
Professor KB Ng
Associate Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, Queens College, CUNY
kbng_at_qc.cuny.edu
ABOUT METRO:
The Metropolitan New York Library Council (METRO) was chartered in 1964 by the New York Board of Regents to “promote and facilitate utilization of existing resources and to develop additional library services in the New York metropolitan area.” Today, with 250 member organizations throughout New York City and Westchester County, METRO is the largest of New York State’s nine reference and research library resource systems, and one of the largest library service organizations in the world. Since 2005, METRO has provided over $300k in digitization grants to fund over 30 small to medium-sized digitization projects as part of its Digital Library Services Plan.
ABOUT THE EDITORS:
Prof. Kwong Bor Ng is an associate professor at the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies, Queens College, CUNY. His most recent publication is Using XML, published by Neal Schuman in 2007. His other book (co-edited with S. Rummler), Collaborative Technologies and Applications for Interactive Information Design: Emerging Trends in User Experiences, will be published in Sept 2009 by IGI Global.
Jason Kucsma is the Emerging Technologies Manager at the Metropolitan New York Library Council where he manages METRO’s Digitization Grant Program and is the point person for member inquiries related to the resources, training and referral services associated with digitization, digital preservation and emerging technologies issues. Jason received his M.A. in American Culture Studies from Bowling Green State University and an M.L.S. from the University of Arizona School of Information Resources and Library Science. He is currently working part-time on a certificate in Digital Information Management (University of Arizona), is part-time lecturer in Rutgers’s Library and Information Science graduate program, and is a recent graduate of ALA’s 2009 Emerging Leaders Program.
