Digitization Standards For Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage Program Collections

Written by the Standards Working Group of the Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage Program, this 27-page document "outlines procedural specifications for all digitization centers and partner projects of the Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage Program." The introduction says:

The following document is meant to provide standards and guidelines for digitization projects created by the Maryland Digital Cultural Heritage (MDCH) program. The use of standards creates a model for measuring the success of a project and sets a mark for creating a project of lasting, educational value. MDCH partners will produce digital files from collections belonging to public libraries and other cultural heritage institutions throughout Maryland. Projects will be created by one of the regional digitization centers or by enlisting the services of commercial vendors. These standards and principles should be applied to all digitization projects to be included in the MDCH Union Catalog. The Union Catalog will aggregate collections from disparately located institutions, providing a powerful new analytical tool for students, researchers and patrons.

The Digitization Standards is a living document and will be re-evaluated to reflect the evolution of technologies and international standards on a semi-annual basis. Each project will present unique problems and some may not be explicitly covered in this document. The MDCH Digitization Standards offers broad principles for this reason. Additionally, the MDCH Standards Working Group will be actively involved in addressing such issues to ensure continuity of all digital collections available in the MDCH Union Catalog.

The document version information indicates that this version is from March 17, 2004.