Guide to Creating a Digital Archive
by Meaghan Fukunaga, Julie Judkins and Krystal Thomas
Introduction
This guide was written by Julie Judkins and Meaghan Fukunaga, Digital Curators at the Center
for the History of Medicine (CHM), University of Michigan Medical School, and Krystal Thomas,
Digital Library Coordinator at the Theodore Roosevelt Center at Dickinson State University. The
information contained in this guide is based on the professional experience of the authors, best
practices in the field of digital preservation, and coursework at the University of Michigan’s
School of Information.
The authors can be contacted at:
Julie Judkins: julieju@med.umich.edu
Meaghan Fukunaga: mof@med.umich.edu
Krystal Thomas krystal.thomas@dickinsonstate.edu
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Planning
Initial planning begins with stakeholder meetings to discuss topics like intended audience,
standards, collection policy scope, hardware and software, finances, and staff requirements. All
involved parties should be present at these meetings whenever possible.
Discussion Questions
 Audience
◦ Who will be most likely to use the archive?
◦ Who do we want to draw to the archive?
◦ Do we want any security measures for privacy?
◦ Do we want a public archive?

Standards
◦ Do we want to follow federal standards, like those put out by the National Archives
and Records Administration (NARA)?
◦ Do we want to follow standards used by academic institutions?
◦ What controlled vocabularies will we want to use? Do we need to create our own set
of keywords?

Collection Policy
◦ What is the scope of our archive?
◦ What materials do we want to include? Do we want to exclude any materials?
▪ What are the copyright concerns for the materials we wish to include?
◦ What are acceptable sources for our materials? Do we want to exclude any sources?
◦ How long do we want to preserve the materials in the archive?
◦ Will we ever deaccession any materials?
◦ How will we preserve the materials in the archive?

Hardware and Software
◦ What sorts of hardware (new computer, scanner, external hard drive) do we need to
acquire?
◦ Are we going to scan items in house or use an outside vendor?
◦ What kind of software do we want to use?
◦ Do we want to host it ourselves?
◦ Do we want to use a vendor?

Finances
◦ How much money do we have for initial development?
◦ How much money do we have over the long-term?
◦ Do we have a steady, long-term funding solution?
◦ If our long-term funding dries up, do we have a viable backup?

Staff
◦ How many staff members do we want?
◦ How many staff members can we sustain over the long-term?
◦ What kind of educational background do our staff members need?
◦ What kind of experience do our staff members need?
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Development of the 1918 Influenza Digital Encyclopedia

MPublishing
◦ Helped CHM design and mount the digital interface that will exhibit the archival
documents collected.

Digital Conversion Unit (DCU)
◦ Where CHM’s materials were digitized. Files were then transferred to MPublishing
for processing.
Development of the Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library

Information Technology Department, North Dakota (ITD)
◦ Home of the digital archival materials for the Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library.
Acts as an advisor to the TRDL for long-term preservation planning.

DataFormat
◦ Company which designed and maintains the Content Management System (CMS)
for the TRDL, DARMA. Acts as a partner in maintenance of standards and OAIS
compliance. Hosts our back-end CMS and public access images

The Berndt Group
◦ Web design firm that redesigned hosts, and maintains the Theodore Roosevelt
Center website and digital library. Also maintains the website’s CMS, SiteCore and
acts as a technology partner for future development.
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Implementation
Creating “investability” (getting people excited about using your digital archive)
 Research presentation opportunities
 Contribute articles to relevant journals or edited collections about the project or digital
humanities
 Join a relevant listserv and promote the launch of your project or other relevant
milestones (use caution -- don’t overdo this, you risk alienating your audience)
 Create a social media presence (blog, facebook, twitter) to show people what is coming
and to share some of the discoveries you’ve already made
 If your project can use volunteers, get the word out locally (or globally if someone can
volunteer from anywhere) and get real people helping you who can then tell their
networks what your project is about
User Testing and Reporting
 Questions to ask during planning
◦ Who will use our collection?
◦ What are our users needs?
◦ What will our users look for?
◦ How will our users find what they’re looking for?
◦ What will our users expect to be able to do with our collection? (share it with friends,
save items for later use, download the document, comment on the document)

Questions to ask before/just after the website is launched
◦ Who can we ask to help us test the website’s functionality? (i.e. colleagues)
◦ How will we test the usability of the website? (questionnaire? pop-up web survey?
informal response?)
◦ How feasible are the suggestions? Can we implement them? How?

Tracking
◦ How will we track site visitors?
◦ What sorts of reporting do we want to know about user behavior on the site? (Most
popular pages? How long a user stays on the page? How does a user find our page?)
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Maintenance
Digital archives require a solid long-term maintenance strategy which takes into consideration
financial, staff, and preservation requirements. Long-term maintenance planning should be a
large component of your initial planning. Long-term maintenance plans should also be revisited
for feasibility from time to time as the project progresses.
Discussion Questions
 Finances
◦ Do we have a long-term funding strategy?
◦ Are we prepared in the event of a disaster? (i.e. catastrophic power failure, company
hosting project servers goes out of business, loss of any major project stakeholders
(including financial backers and staff))
◦ Are we financially prepared to migrate digital materials to new formats or even a new
software platform as needed?
◦ Do we have the finances to maintain and keep current any software or websites
associated with the archive?

Staff
◦ Do we have the finances to maintain staff over the long-term?
◦ Do we have a plan to help staff keep current with trends in their fields? (i.e.
conference attendance, certification, seminars)
◦ What core staff do we want to maintain? (i.e. a digital archivist, web-designer, etc.)

Preservation
◦ How long do we want to maintain this digital archive?
◦ How will we ensure our digital materials are backed-up in the event of a catastrophe?
◦ Do we understand the technical aspects of long-term preservation of digital materials?
◦ Can we support digital materials over the long-term? (i.e. migration to new
formats)
◦ If we are using a vendor to host our archive can we afford this over the long-term?
◦ Do we have the funds to maintain this digital archive over the long-term?
◦ Do we have the funds to maintain staff over the long-term?
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Learn More
Examples of Digital Archives
 Veterans History Project at Library of Congress
 Walt Whitman Archive
 National Archives Experience: Digital Vaults
 September 11th Digital Archive
 Digital Library of the Week (ALA)
 Minnesota Reflections
 Europeana
 World Digital Library
 Community & Conflict: The Impact of the Civil War in the Ozarks
 Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library
 The American Influenza Epidemic of 1918: A Digital Encyclopedia
 Seeking Michigan
Information about Digitization
 Digital Conversion Unit, University of Michigan. “Summary of Digitization Costs.”
https://www.lib.umich.edu/files/DCURechargeRates-2009.pdf
 Writing History in the Digital Age (many articles are examples of digital projects)
◦
Julie’s article on AIE: “Case Study of the American Influenza Epidemic of 1918: A
Digital Encyclopedia”
 Digital Preservation, resources and tools compiled by the Library of Congress regarding
preservation of digital information
◦
Sustainability of Digital Formats
 Theodore Roosevelt Center Digital Imaging and Metadata Guidelines
◦
Comprehensive manual about all imaging guidelines and metadata standards for
the Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library project
 NINCH (National Initiative for a National Cultural Heritage) Guide to Good Practice in the
Digital Representation and Management of Cultural Heritage Materials
◦
From Scotland, a good overview of all aspects of planning, implementing and
maintaining a digital project with archival and library materials.
Oral History On-line Resources
 Existing Oral History Sites (Veteran's History Project, Library of Congress)
 Oral History on the Web -- Exemplary Sites (History Matters)
Digitization Standards
 Library of Congress Digitization Standards
 Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative
 U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Technical Guidelines for
Digitizing Archival Materials for Electronic Access: Creation of Production Master Files –
Raster Image
 Society of American Archivists Standards Portal
◦ Includes Description and arrangement standards as well as digitization standard
information
 PREMIS: Preservation Metadata Maintenance Activity (Library of Congress)
 Digital Projects Guide (Harvard University Information Technology)
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Collection Policy Examples
 University of Texas Libraries
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/admin/cird/policies/subjects/framework.html
 Theodore Roosevelt Center (Dickinson, North Dakota)
http://www.theodorerooseveltcenter.org/About-Us/TRDL-Collection-Policy.aspx
 South Carolina Digital Library
http://www.scmemory.org/about/policy.php
Metadata, Keywords, and Thesauri
 Library of Congress Basic Genre Terms for Cultural Heritage Materials
 Library of Congress Subject and Name Authorities
 Art and Architecture Thesaurus
 FAST: Faceted Application of Subject Terminology
User testing and Usability
 Dumas and Loring, Moderating usability tests (2008)
 Dumas and Redish, A Practical Guide To Usability Testing (Rev. ed, 1999)
 Nielsen, Jakob’s useit.com
 Rubin and Chisnell. Handbook of usability testing: how to plan, design, and conduct
effective tests (2nd edition, 2008)
Copyright Resources
 Copyright and Digitization, Midwest Collaborative for Library Services
 Copyright Term and the Public Domain, Cornell University (updated yearly)
 United States Copyright Office
Social Media Resources
 Ten Must Haves in Your Social Media Policy, Mashable
 Social Media Policies Superlist, iiG
 Social Media Strategy Handbook, The American Red Cross
Conferences/Networking Opportunities
 Digital Humanities Winter Institute http://www.cmlt.umd.edu/
o January 7 - 11, 2013
o College Park, Maryland (University of Maryland)
o Week long courses on subjects related to the digital humanities
http://www.cmlt.umd.edu/?q=courses
 Digital Humanities Summer Institute http://www.dhsi.org/
o June 10 - 14, 2013
o Victoria, British Columbia, Canada (University of Victoria)
o Week long courses on subjects related to the digital humanities
http://dhsi.org/courses.php
o Scholarships available (applications due in Fall)
 THATCamp http://thatcamp.org/
o National and International, year-round
 Joint Conference on Digital Libraries http://jcdl.org/
o 2013 conference will be held in Indianapolis, Indiana
 DLib Magazine’s list of conferences of interest http://www.dlib.org/groups.html
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Further Reading
 Historical Collections for the National Digital Library: Lessons and Challenges at the
Library of Congress [Part I]
 Historical Collections for the National Digital Library: Lessons and Challenges at the
Library of Congress [Part II]
 Standards Related to Digital Imaging of Pictorial Materials
 Library of Congress Workshop Materials
◦ The Digital Library Environment materials include information on Digital Project
planning, Metadata creation and Cataloging standard selection.
 D-Lib Magazine
◦ “An electronic publication with a focus on digital library research and development,
including new technologies, applications, and contextual social and economic
issues.”
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