Digitization at Colorado State University Libraries

Helen Baer, Digital Projects Librarian

​

For Digital Collections Stewardship 1: Introduction

​

Presented by the Colorado State Library and the Wyoming State Library

September 24, 2025

Today

• Brief intro to Digital and Archive Services at CSU Libraries
• High-level view of workflows and policies
• How does an undigitized item end up online?
• What is the basis of our decisions?
• How do we keep track of it all?
• Digital stewardship life cycle
• Digitization equipment and digital storage
• Pain points
• Questions

Colorado A & M Forestry camp roster 1947, 1947

Digital and Archive Services

• Collecting strengths:
• Colorado agriculture and water
• University history
• Second-wave feminism
• 10 faculty and staff/9.0 FTE, plus ~7 part time students and 3 non-student hourlies
• Digital Services group
• Trista Barker (Digital Imaging Specialist) manages the Digitization Lab
• Digitizing since 2005; 106,588 images in 2024
• Output:
• 99% is published in one of the two repositories, CONTENTdm and DSpace
• Direct to requestors
• Stakeholders/collections owners = archivists

Bill Green, 1110: Indian Peaks Wilderness Area, waterfall on south fork of Middle Boulder Creek, undated

Three Basic Strategies for Digitization (The “How”)

1. In-house digitization
2. Use a vendor
3. Partnering with another organization (like sharing equipment or CMS, or digitizing like collections)

Farm mechanics class, 1924 December 1

Workflows: Selection for Digitization

• DAS Collection Development Policy (excerpt):

Collecting Rationale�Archives & Special Collections seeks collection materials that:

• enhance, complement, or diversify established holdings
• foster connections among collections
• support the academic strengths of Colorado State University

​

• Focus on strengths (water, agriculture), plus some new directions:
• Environmental sustainability
• Veterinary medicine related to animal welfare and translational medicine
• Builds off of our strategic plan
• There isn’t a separate policy for digital collections, though some institutions have them
• Collaborative digitization projects

Workflows: Requesting Digitization

• We do not offer digitization services for non-library materials
• Method 1: “Ad Hoc” requests
• Method 2: Digital Projects Proposal Form
• Digital Projects Proposal Review Group
• Approval: deadlines/scheduling

Workflows: In-House Digitization

• Prep work (physical)
• Project folder on Staging (Trista)
• Delivery of material to the lab
• Students scan!
• QC (Trista)
• Deliverables (usually Trista)
• Notify requestor/Digital Services staff member that files are ready (Trista)
• Return material to collection owner

Miriam Palmer, Arkansas Black apple, probably 1904-1906

What Happens in the Digitization Lab?

• Removal of staples and other impediments to using a flatbed scanner
• Trista assigns the work to a student
• Scanning happens!
• QC and deliverables
• Skipped pages
• Skewed pages
• File naming policy
• Statistics

Warren Garst, Small spotted genet sitting in tree, 1958-1988

Workflows: Outsourced Digitization

• Prep work (physical)
• Ship material to vendor
• Project folder on Staging (Trista)
• Sample files from vendor are reviewed
• Vendor scans and delivers digital files
• QC
• Hard without the materials in front of you
• Time-consuming
• Deliverables (vendor)
• Notify requestor/Digital Services staff member that files are ready
• Shipping, return of material to collection

Sutherland, Tom, Wool qualities A.H. 164, undated

Workflows: Metadata, Ingest, and Project Close-Out

• Metadata
• Pool of 5 metadata creators; Dublin Core
• Ingest: CONTENTdm or DSpace
• Communication with collection owner
• Statistics
• Digitization
• Ingests
• Documentation: Staging server > Dark Archive
• Reason for non-publication in one of the repositories

Track - Walter Early, 440 relay, 1930 April 2

Digitization Equipment

• Epson 12000XL flatbed scanner (5 workstations)
• Scan size: 11 x 17”, scans up to 2400 ppi
• Used for fragile objects, photographs, documents, bound or unbound
• Zeutschel OS 12000 oversize scanner (1 workstation) BookEye!
• Scan size: A1 (33.3 x 23.6”), scans up to 200 ppi
• Used for bound fragile objects and oversize objects, fragile and non-fragile
• Epson Perfection V750 Pro negative scanner (1 workstation)
• Scan size: 8.5 x 11.7”, scans up to 6400 ppi
• For scanning negatives, prints, and slides New photo negative scanning station!
• Fujitsu fi-7180 high speed scanner (3 workstations)
• For access-level scanning only
• Letter-size
• Canon EOS Rebel SL3
• For digitizing three-dimensional objects

Digitization Policies

• Access- vs. preservation-level scanning
• Special formats
• Vendor digitization
• Redactions and omissions
• File naming
• Application of OCR - ABBYY

Outstanding Cultural Awareness SOAR Award, 2005

Preservation-Level Scanning

• FADGI 4 star, FADGI Technical Guidelines for Digitizing Cultural Heritage Materials - 3rd Edition (2023)
• Scan in color
• TIFFs usually
• “Ordinary” non-oversize materials, generally a minimum of 400 ppi
• Oversize items such as maps, posters, and other materials, generally at a minimum of 300 ppi
• Photographs, 600 ppi
• Slides and 35 mm filmstrips, 5000 ppi

Access-Level Scanning

• “Modern textual documents” and “cultural heritage materials”
• Example: Theses and dissertations
• JPEGs or TIFFs for initial scanning
• 300 ppi
• Bitonal, grayscale, or color as appropriate
• PDF/A-2u for deliverable and for retention in the Dark Archive

Tennis - Dorie Alice Goddard, 1931 December

Additional Considerations for Deliverables

• Deliverables vary by repository
• Repository affordances/limitations
• File size
• PDFs over 30 MB are reduced in size (“optimized”)
• Files cannot be larger than 2 GB in CONTENTdm
• FFmpeg script to reduce file sizes for audiovisual materials
• Choice of repositories
• DSpace doesn’t handle groups of individual files well

Fez of Michael J. Hogarty, circa 1890-circa 1900

Vendor Digitization Policies

What is outsourced?

• All audiovisual materials
• Oversize materials (over 33.3 x 23.6”)
• Nitrate negatives
• Grant projects, sometimes

What is not outsourced?

• Fragile materials

Freedom Foundation at Valley Forge, 1992 November

How Do We Keep Track of It All?

• Trello board, LibGuide, Teams/OneDrive
• Bimonthly meetings with Digital Services plus an archivist and department head
• Project proposals are retained after approval

Roemer's Guernsey herd, 1931 October 5

Partnering with Another Organization

1. UCSF grant project
1. 2018ish
2. Great Western Sugar Records, in the Food Industry Documents digital collection
2. Partnering with ILL
• Started December 2024
• Purposes:
1. Relieve the Digitization Lab of having to scan items not destined for one of the repositories
2. Relieve DAS staff of metadata/ingest duties for one-offs
3. Partnering with Rocky Mountain Student Media
• Circa 2020-2021
• For CSU-related films on tape

​

Pain Points in the Digitization Process

• Small orders take almost as much time as large ones
• Ad hocs
• Hence the partnership with ILL, use of copiers and cell phones, etc.
• Getting replacement equipment takes a long time
• Overhead scanner (Zeutschel) doesn’t meet FADGI standards (~200 ppi)
• Poster scanner
• Oversize materials are generally difficult
• QC - 10%, can be difficult with outsourced projects
• Vacancy – Digital Projects Librarian, interviews start next week!
• CONTENTdm ingests/lack of automation
• Space on Staging and on the Dark Archive

Digital Storage Pain Points

• Involves
• Copying files from Staging to Dark Archive
• Copying documentation to Dark Archive
• Deleting deliverables and other working documents
• Space is an issue
• Space managed by central IT
• Domino-style moves
• May need to change how to organize the Dark Archive
• Delayed decisions about disposition of materials
• Ingest
• Move to Dark Archive without publishing
• Delete

CSU Mountain Campus session 3, NR220, 2017

Hard Lines Lose Focus …

• FADGI, Dublin Core
• Rights statements
• Written at the record level; sometimes this affects how we write metadata
• Look for adjacencies
• Think about your library/museum users

Cornelius-Jablonski, Lynn, Blue voyage, 2006

Thank You!

Helen Baer, Digital Projects Librarian

helen.baer@colostate.edu

Colorado State University

Morgan Library

970-491-5934

​

​

All images courtesy of CSU Libraries Archives & Special Collections

Coons, Frank, Class of "37," 1937