Working groups make the DLF community an effective agent of change and help our members get things done. The cost assessment subcommittee (Joyce Chapman, Kinza Masood, Chrissy Rissmeyer, and Dan Zellner) of our DLF Assessment Interest Group has been hard at work developing a Digitization Cost Calculator, a tool that provides estimates of time and cost to those planning digitization projects.
Since the beta version of the calculator was released last year, the subcommittee has redesigned the interface:
The group, with input from members of the digital library community, has also developed a set of definitions for specific data fields in the calculator, which– in addition to serving as a crucial reference point for those contributing to the calculator– can also help establish a common vocabulary for digital library practitioners to talk about workflows and steps in a digitization project. To inform this work, the group also compiled a bibliography on cost assessment and digitization workflow best practices in digital libraries.
The group now calls for contributions of data in order to move the calculator forward. The more data contributed, the more useful the calculator’s estimates will be, and data is currently limited. All data submitted will be made publicly available, both in aggregate and as exact data. (To see how the information will be used and displayed, check out the Notes About Data.) Contribute to the calculator here: https://duke.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3OtqSEAbpl2QDl3.
Learn more about DLF’s Digital Library Assessment Interest Group at: https://www.diglib.org/groups/assessment/. Current subcommittees are focusing on tools and best practices documents to support cost assessment, ways to measure the benefits of investing in digital libraries, and assessment of user needs and usability.
We invite you to learn more about DLF’s working groups, what they’re up to, and how to get involved. If you want to start a group, let us know.
