Have Scans, Will Travel? Hosting Your Scans at DigitalNC

Moving Truck Transferring Family Possessions, from the Gaston County Museum of Art & History

Moving Truck Transferring Family Possessions, from the Gaston County Museum of Art & History

The Digital Heritage Center does a lot of scanning on some really versatile machines. It’s one of the practical sides to our mission, and we take pride in being able to provide that service.

What is perhaps less well known is that we also help cultural heritage institutions publish items they’ve scanned themselves. Many cultural heritage institutions have flatbed or book scanners as well as willing staff and volunteers, but lack the technical infrastructure to host those scans for the public.

We’ve helped institutions …

  • who needed to migrate from ailing databases or systems they can no longer support,
  • who wanted to be able to full-text search their materials, a function they couldn’t fulfill through their current website,
  • who offered their digital files to on-site users, but who were seeking a broader audience.

When we start this conversation, here are some of the questions we ask:

  • Tell us about the original physical objects* – does your institution still have them? are there any rights or privacy concerns to sharing these online? what kind of subject matter is represented?
  • Tell us about the digital files – who originally created them? how many are there? where do they live? what file types? how are they organized? is this an ongoing project? do you have any metadata already?

If the files are a good fit for DigitalNC, they get transferred to hard drives, metadata is created or amended, and items appear on the site alongside the scans we create here at the Center. If you work at a cultural heritage institution eligible to work with the Center, have or are currently creating scans, and are interested in adding these to DigitalNC, contact us. We may be able to give them a home.

* If there were any. We can help with born-digital items as well.


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This blog is maintained by the staff of the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center and features the latest news and highlights from the collections at DigitalNC, an online library of primary sources from organizations across North Carolina.

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