Project Documentation was prepared by Peter Ryan.
Project Documentation: Lessons Learned

In preparing to digitize the Kinji Imanishi Digital Archive and during the photography process, a variety of issues arose regarding the handling of materials for the project. The following list is a guide to how these issues were resolved.

Lessons Learned

1. MODELS: Model, systematize, and standardize any process that possibly can be simplified. It will save time, headaches, and help in the protection of the archived materials in the long run. Such projects as the Alberta Folklore Project and the METS standards are helpful models for stream-lining image projects.

2. PROJECT FUNDS: Further ways to fund projects such as this might be to create courses around archiving the material or to fly the source material to the location where it would be easiest to create the archive given space and equipment availability.

3. EQUIPMENT: Equipment acquisition, lab space, and archive materials should be allocated time and money as a part of any funding proposal. This includes questions of what type of process: optical character recognition (OCR), photography, hand coding, text markup, or scanning. What are you paying for and what is free?

4. METADATA: Developing a precise metadata list and categorization required for the materials to be archived based on a precise list of the materials. It is very difficult to complete a material list from across great distance, so ensure materials are requisitioned with precision and care. Both the owner of the material and those who will take care of the materials during archiving should have full contractual records of each party's obligations.

5. IMAGE INFO: Image information that must be captured in each picture could be prepared and printed prior to the start of the project. This ensures that a full list of the documented materials is also already prepared. Instead of having individual tags from an electronic label maker, one could use labels created on a computer and preprint all of the labels.

6. TEAM: Ensure that team morale is unified and understood. A well-prepared team obviously works better than an ill-advised unit. When time is valuable, this is never something that should be forgotten.

7. WORKSTATION: The setup of a workstation is very important. In this project’s case, the physical organization of space aided in the trade of memory cards from the digital photographer to the computer data-baser. This process cut down on the time that it took to store materials to the hard-drive or create backup CD-Roms.

For more information on photography, planning, processing, or security, please see their individual documentation:

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