Digitisation: outsource or in house?
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OVERVIEW
This is an extract from the UKOLN Good Practice Guide looking at wasy to decide whether the digitisation of materials is best done in-house on specially purchased or existing equipment or sent to an external agency or commercial bureau.
Setting up a digitisation unit gives the institution the value of equipment and trained staff for future projects and the movement and treatment of the materials can be closely controlled. Using an external supplier to do the scanning means that the equipment and expertise of a third party can be exploited while the project team concentrates on their specialist area of the project. Using a bureau also means that the cost of buying and maintaining specialist and expensive equipment is not borne by the project.
Both approaches have their merits but there are certain situations where the choices are more clear cut.
Using a bureau
Major reasons for sending materials to a bureau for digitisation rather than attempting to scan them in-house include that the originals are not capable of being scanned successfully in-house (for example the equipment is excessively expensive) or that the intended product is beyond the experience and abilities of the project: for example requiring advanced colour management skills. As an example, the type of equipment used for the scanning of items such as bound books or microfilms tends to be so expensive that it may be difficult for a project to justify the expenditure on such equipment, particularly given the short life-span and high maintenance costs of scanning equipment.
Other reasons for outsourcing may include where there is a large volume of work to be done in a short period of time or where the project has space, infrastructure or staffing constraints which preclude the setting up of in-house facilities.
In-house unit
Alternatively, the project manager may decide to use in-house resources for several reasons including that:
- The collection cannot be moved out of the institution
- The collection is badly organised (organising it well enough to send to an external supplier would be an excessive overhead)
- The digitisation needs to be phased in small amounts over a long period
- The digitisation task is very simple.
It may also be that the project can call on existing staff knowledge and equipment which would mean the project could be done in-house with limited further capital expenditure.
Infrastructure requirements for in-house digitisation
- A robust production level scanner which will be able to scan the originals to a suitable resolution
- A powerful PC with lots of memory (at least 256Mb RAM) (or Mac equivalent)
- Plenty of system resources such as backup and write to media (e.g. CDROM) capacity
- Software to assist the digitisation
- Experienced/competent staff to run the equipment and staff to oversee the process and quality assurance.
This is assuming that the in-house operation wants to approach anywhere near the unit prices of production available from outside agencies.
A further reason why many projects are undertaken in-house is that the staff time, overheads and some consumables such as file storage can often be swallowed up by the institution and do not become apparent as a costed factor of the project, thus making this appear to be a cheaper option than out-outsourcing.
There is no easy answer to the question of whether to scan in-house or to outsource because it depends so closely on the project team, the institution and the materials.
Choosing a scanning bureau
If the project decides to use an external body to digitise the materials then it is important to carefully look at the available service providers. Two good places to find scanning bureaux are:
Among the most important things that you should ask potential suppliers are:
- Can they conform to all relevant specified technical standards and guidelines?
- Do not accept that the format they suggest instead will do just as well, get substantial benchmark samples done before you contract with them. Take third party advice if necessary.
- Give the bureau a copy of the technical specifications and this information paper.
- Do they have safe storage facilities for the originals away from the production area?
- If you require it do they have temperature controlled areas?
- Will your originals be worked on by them or do they intend to contract to another supplier?
- You need to know where your originals are.
Develop a tight specification of requirements and a contract that sets out what you expect from the vendor, including technical procedures, output formats, handling requirements and timescales. Insist that they will rework any data that fails your quality assurance procedures (i.e. that falls outside the requirements of the contract) without further cost.
Some suppliers will claim to be able to do any type of media that you ask them to tackle but experience suggests that bureaux tend to specialise in certain types of conversion, for example high volume paper materials or high end colour image based work. Where this is the case they may not be as good at some media or they may outsource those media to a partner bureau. Insist on samples, undertake a vendor assessment or seek third party advice before contracting.
If the work is of such a volume that the job has to go out to tender, bear in mind that the cheapest quote may not be from the best bureau for the job. Ask each of the short-listed bureaux to undertake samples to your required specification and ask them to provide a detailed description of the processes used to achieve the output along with a price. You should then choose the supplier that provides the best value for money in terms of quality, price and the suitability of the conversion procedures.
Sources of advice and guidance
The article To outsource, or to digitise in-house?from JISC Digital Media gives advice and guidance on how to decide whether to undertake digitisation activity in house or to contract it out. It is intended to inform the managers of analogue collections which have been identified for digitisation.
The practical guidelines in the MINERVA good practice handbook cover topics such as Preparing for digitisation and The digitisation process .
Related Digipedia articles
Further information
[[role::project management]][[role::content management]][[goal::managing]][[goal::digitising]] [[level::basic]][[level::medium]]
