Using Technology to Increase Access to valuable Resources: Experience with Digitization at the University of the West Indies Library, Mona, Jamaica

According to Derek Law, Libraries have to rebrand their services in order to embrace the Library 2.0 world if they hope to effectively serve the digital natives, who were born during the advent of the internet, the World Wide Web (WWW) and the various online social spaces that have been invented shortly before and during their lifetime. Digitization of unique collections is one way of rebranding [1]. Physical documents that would normally be limited to the use of only one individual at a time, can now be accessed by several individuals simultaneously without visiting the physical library. Specific collections housed in the West Indies and Special Collection Library have been identified for digitization in order to create greater access in terms of use of the material, and to sensitise users of their existence in order to remove all threads of obscurity from the existence of these documents! A team was created to identify documents in the West Indies and Special Collection that should be digitised. Fifteen such collections were identified as they were not visible enough, or were too old and brittle and therefore needed to be digitised for preservation. A well known commercial software was identified and other relevant equipment sourced. A literature search was done on critical areas of digitization, with the intention of developing a manual as the digitization process advances. It has been discovered that best practices require that a master copy of scanned images at full resolution be kept in order to prevent the rescanning of these unique and sometimes fragile documents. The development of a process manual is essential as it will act as a guide not only for the present team, but for future development of the project by new individuals. Challenges were encountered in the testing of the software, but alternatives were available.