A brief overview of the principles and background on mass digitization projects at the City Archives of Amsterdam. Principles from the work of industry are bering used for managing large digitization projects. The focus in project management shifts from scans to proces control. More details can be found in the corresponding report https://www.amsterdam.nl/publish/pages/805885/digitisation_based_on_industrial_principles.pdf

1. Digitization based on principles from the
world of industry
A new approach on the management of mass digitization projects
Marc Holtman
Nelleke van Zeeland
City Archives Amsterdam

2. City Archives
Amsterdam
Netherlands
What is it?
Where is it?

3. Netherla nds

4. A m sterda m

5. City A rchiv es

7. City Archives Amsterdam 50 km archives
100.000 visitors on a yearly basis
Municipal archives
Church archives
Family archives
Organizations Notary archives on
Unesco Heritage list
Archival documents,
photo’s, drawings and
prints
80 FTE colleagues

8. Open environment
Research
Exhibitions
Education
Cultural activities
Bricks…

9. …and Bits

11. We want to enable
all archival research
24 / 7
online
worldwide and
for free

12. D igitiz a tion City A rchiv es
Scanning on demand
Customer driven
Since 2006 40.000 orders processed
Project based digitization
Different projects
Small and large, all document types
All inventory numbers can be requested (for free)
All in total now we have 30 million scans online

13. Two projects
made us
rethink
the way we manage
our
digitization projects

14. Notary archives / Golden Agents
Scholary project on Amsterdam in the 17th century
Production of 1,5 million scans every year
New repository
Building a new repository in the outskirts of the city
1,5 km of archives to be digitized in two years
Three kilometres of archives

15. Production rate for 2018
20.000 scans scanning on demand per week
35.000 scans notary archives per week
40.000 scans repository projects per week
95.000 scans per week
19.000 scans per work
day
2.375 scans per hour
40 scans per minute

16. How can we
increase production
without making
the process too complex
and without
compromising quality

17. Ba sic digitiz a tion principles
Digitization is always project based
One proces for all digitization
No descriptive metadata is produced during digitization
Pre-processing only on a minimal level
Digitization of the folders as found in the repository
Only complete folders (inventory numbers)
Scanning is outsourced to external suppliers
Today’s production is online tomorrow (ambition)
Innovation by collaboration

18. Industrialized
Large scale
Continuous production
Scalable
Needs
A single, standardized process
Automating everything that can be automated
A pragmatic view on quality management

19. With a production of 20.000
scans per day you can’t check
every single scan

20. Objective
A stable process
The outcome can be predicted

21. Four main quality aspects
1. No damage to or loss of the originals
2. The reproductions contain all relevant information from the originals
3. All information is digitized, in the correct order
4. The scans are correctly linked to the descriptive metadata

22. Four methodes for quality assessment
1. Auditing the process
3. Automated checks
2. Assessing production reports
4. Sampling of scans and originals

23. Auditing the process
In tenders and during the project
Transparancy
Project evaluation and innovation

24. Production reports

25. Production reports

26. Production reports

27. Sampling
Completeness
Damage
Automated checks
On scans (filenames, foldernames, checksums)
Image quality

29. Achievements
Better tenders
The process became scalable
The price per scan decreased by 50%
Suppliers implemented innovative solutions
Higher quality because of attention for all quality aspects
Quality of the project management increased

30. During this presentation
792 scans
have been produced