DOT Operating Principles (DRAFT)

General:

• These operating principles apply to DSpace and Dome, as well as to born-digital and not born-digital materials.
• There is a two-step nomination process for digital projects.  The purpose of the process is to prevent spending extensive time on developing a project that is ultimately not feasible or fundable. 
• For most projects, we develop a wiki page to track progress and document decisions.

Selection:

These criteria were developed by the DOME Selection Criteria Task Force in 2009 and have been in use since then.

• Collection development policies apply equally to both physical and digital collections. Collection Managers and Subject Specialists should feel confident selecting content for digital projects using their existing guidelines. 
• Candidates for digitization might include the following:
  • items with unique content
  • items with content that is applicable to the MIT curriculum
  • items that have MIT-specific access requirements 
  • items in fragile condition
  • items for which there is current or anticipated heavy use
  • materials in the DDC collection
  • items which would be easier to use or for which use would be enhanced if presented online
  • items associated with “triggers” such as an academic department’s anniversary

Research Publications:

• Research Publications do not go through the approval process unless it is expected to involve a large expense.
• Archives would like a due diligence pass at collections that were MIT produced, digitized and ingested into DSpace, and up for withdrawal from the library.

Preservation & Conservation Services:

Digital projects vary greatly in size, scope, and purpose, and correspondingly, the type and amount of preparation required for the materials will also vary by project.  PCS in-house procedures for preparing digital project materials (in use since 2008) are summarized at https://wikis.mit.edu/confluence/display/LIBCMS/Digital+Projects+Procedures. The level of service provided by Preservation & Conservation Services for a digital project will be negotiated as part of the project planning process and may include the following:

• Preliminary physical assessment of a sample of the project materials to determine their "scan-ability" and to estimate the time and cost associated with physical preparation.
• Item-by-item physical inspection, assessment, and collation of materials before scanning.  This also serves as a quality control check on the master inventory list.
• Conservation treatments to ensure good image capture. 
• Packing of materials to reduce the risk of damage and to meet vendor specifications.
• Shipping and receiving of materials, communication with vendor.
• Inspection of returned items for vendor-caused damage, repairs as necessary.
• Disposition of physical copies (rehousing/rebinding/repair as needed for materials to be stored or circulated, coordination with other library units for withdrawal and discard).

 Scanning:

• No blanket digitization standard is applied to all materials.  Each project has unique characteristics and therefore procedures and standards must be tested, discussed, and agreed upon before digitizing.
• Missing Pages: Document Services will include a page in the pdf with the message that the page was missing in the original.
• OCR will be performed on all text items, if print quality permits.
• Image Derivative creation – either the vendor or the sponsoring library will create image derivatives, or Document Services can provide this service for $60/hour.  The Operations Team cannot spare the staff time to do this for free. 
• File disposition: https://wikis.mit.edu/confluence/spaces/gliffy/viewlargediagram.action?name=File Disposition** RDrive:DSpace Images  - the master files will reside in this folder prior to ingestion
  • Download locally for faster work ex. Cataloging - download to work locally then only upload the metadata or derivatives
  • Never overwrite or replace files on RDrive:DSpace Images
    • Exception: When files are damaged or misnamed. Limited number of people who can do this.
• OCA scanned files in Internet Archive will also be loaded into our repository.
• The digital copy is considered one of the “two copies” for the libraries. The disposition of the physical copies is up to the sponsoring library.  Blanket decision? The libraries decision? (Highlight for IRL)
• Space requirements

Filenaming:

• As we create new collections, it is useful if there is consistency in the filenames assigned to digital objects. This document contains a recommended filenaming schema developed in 2008 for use in the MIT Libraries: \[https://wikis.mit.edu/confluence/x/-wIrAQ

  ../x/-wIrAQ]

  Each collection will impose its own restrictions on filenames, but following the requirements outlined in this documents will ensure basic consistency across collections and make later processing of the files much easier.  In general, we won't change the file names on born-digital material unless the names violate the Requirements and Best Practices in this document.

Metadata:

• Majority rules: if over half the project is cataloged to one standard then the remaining items will be cataloged to the same standard.
• Catalog from the digital copy whenever possible this adds the benefit of quality control of scanning.
• If our only copy is a digital copy in DSpace then we will not create a record for the digital copy in Barton but rather include a series record with a link explaining that there are more reports in DSpace. If our only copy FIX
• Each Metadata Services project will contain a best practices wiki page for historical record. Broaden

Ingest:

• Under 50 reports will have a temporary hire or student worker load via single item submission instead of batch loading.  The metadata script for single item submission can be found here https://wikis.mit.edu/confluence/display/LIBMETADATA/MDBESTPRACSwrkflwDSpaceSubmission
• Larger projects are batch loaded by DOT (Carl Jones)
• Deposits to the repository are permanent unless General Counsel and Steering Committee recommended removal.
• Administrators of collections in the repository should be kept to a minimum.  In Dome, Carl Jones and Beverly Turner will have access to all collections.  Andrea Schuler will be given access to all Rotch Visual Collections.  Sean Thomas and Carl Jones will be given access to all batch projects in DSpace@MIT.