Digitization Project Update

I never realized how much digitization would involve and have learned so much.  I had to develop standards and looked at what many of the libraries and archives out there were doing.  I had to decide on how to back-up my work.  Also I have had to think about what to digitize first and prioritize the collections.  Luckily I took the advice of so many that have done this before me.  I did not jump in right away and start digitizing.  I researched and figured out what would hopefully work best.  When I am digitizing I am making a preservation copy (a large TIFF file) and a small jpg that can be easily posted online.  I am hoping that this will allow us to follow a scan once policy.  So, if someone wants to have a print of a photograph they have seen online I can size the unedited master file to the size they require.  This allows for people to look at a specific photo in detail and will hopefully allow us to upload larger higher resolution photos as people get better quality screens on their computers.  We are pretty fortunate to be able to use the OurOntario.ca toolkit for this project.  The one great thing is that a person does not need much technical knowledge to upload photographs to the website.  At the moment I have digitized just over 600 photographs.  Although it is a slow process, in the end it should be really worthwhile.  Describing the photographs takes a lot of time since I am putting in all of the details that we know and thereby making the images searchable on the website.  It is really great to see that the list of organizations contributing to the ourontario.ca project is increasing as I really think this is a wonderful project.  I will soon be at the point where I will be finalizing my design for  marketing materials and promoting this project to the local community.  You can browse through the images I have posted here.  If you have any comments, suggestions or ideas for me about this project (or marketing this project) I would appreciate it.