Guiding principles to use with collaborators

Last week, a client and I began to think about their possible collaborators. As ideas streamed forth about "who" and "how", we began to think about the expectations they would have of their collaborators. I had a copy of the NARA draft Plan for Digitizing Archival Materials for Public Access, which contains their "Principles for Partnerships to Digitize Archival Materials" on pp. 20 - 22. This led to brainstorming, note taking, and many ideas. After a while, we realized that some of our principles were similar to those that NARA is proposing, while some were quite different. The client liked the idea of stating core principles upfront and placing them in the digitization plan. The principles help to set some clear expectations, while providing some "wiggle room."

If you have not looked at the draft plan from NARA, you might want to take a look at their principles and then decide if you should draft a version for yourself. Considering setting down thoughts/expectations in writing before you find yourself in a collaborative effort.

Related post: Public comments sought on NARA's "Plan for Digitizing Archival Materials for Public Access"

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Technorati tag: Digitization