Resources

Additional resources

On this page are additional resources, which have either been referred to in the Digital Access to Collections workshops or participants have expressed an interest in the content, but the content is outside the scope of inclusion in the Digital Access to Collections training manual. This page will be updated throughout Stage 2 of the Digitial Access to Collections project, so be sure to check in to see updates!

Conservation and Preservation:

When you are considering digitisation, you may also need to consider the preservation or conservation of your collection items as well.

Your collection items may need some attention before they digitised to ensure they are as presentable as possible, and they definitely deserve some attention after they are digitised. An organisation should consider conservation and preservation techniques and practices to ensure collection items are kept safe from damage and to reduce the effects of aging.

The Digital Access to Collections workshops and training do not cover conservation and preservation, but there are many very useful resources available online.

Oral History resource:

Download the very helpful resource "Recording your story: Collecting oral histories" by Museums Australia Victoria here: PDF iconRecording_Your_Story_-_Oral_History_Kit.pdf

Photography resource:

Download the very helpful resource "Photographing your collection" by Philip Moorhouse from The Collecting Bug here: PDF iconPhotographing_Your_Collectables_-_Philip_Moorhouse.pdf

PDF iconPhotographing_Your_Collectables_-_Philip_Moorhouse.pdf

Selling digitisation to management

Sometimes the hardest hurdle to face in the beginning is how to convince your management, committee or board that digitisation is both an essential and valuable task for your organisation to undertake.

Here are some articles and business cases that may provide some useful approaches to selling the idea of digitisation and providing digital access to management:

State and Territory funding opportunities:

Here are lists of funding opportunties, to find grants that will can help you digitise your collection. Often organisations need some financial assistance to help them get started, especially with digitisation projects and providing digital access to their digitised works. The lists are based per state and territory.

Volunteer Agreements:

A volunteer agreement is another piece of policy that an organisation should consider in the planning stage. The agreement ensures that all volunteers within the organisation are aware of the practices and procedures they are expected to follow when volunteering with the organisation.

A volunteer agreement is a way in which clear expectations are set. It can be very useful for a digitisation project as a means of setting the standards to which volunteers will work. Again, these policies and agreements should be adapted to suit each organisation, there are very few one-size-fits-all approaches - each organisation will have its own requirements of volunteers.

When implementing a volunteer agreement, it is best to make sure it is not too complex. It should be accessible and clear for the volunteer so that the paperwork does not appear too daunting.

A volunteer agreement can include:

  • An outline or purpose of the volunteer work
  • The days or hours agreed to by the volunteer and organisation
  • The start and end date (if appropriate)
  • Acknowledgement of key policies to be agreed to and signed by the volunteer.

Within a volunteer agreement it can be important that volunteers have received and signed:

  • A position description: specifically outlining the duties and tasks they are performing or a description of the project they are working on.
  • A statement of volunteer rights and responsibilities: these can be broad policies that include OH&S, equal opportunity, privacy, harassment and discrimination policies.
  • Policies and procedures: these include policies of customer service, communications policies, OH&S, confidentiality, policies including the handling, storage, display, digitisation, photography of, metadata and filename procedures surrounding the collection.

Please note: If a volunteer undertakes work for an organisation, the volunteer owns the copyright in the work as the creator. It may be important to include in your written agreements how you wish to manage copyright ownership with volunteers. One option is that you may request that anything they create will be licenced under Creative Commons so your organisation may freely use it.

It is important to establish what the roles and responsibilities of each volunteer are, especially if they are working on a digitisation project. This way everyone is required to work to the same standards to avoid issues of misplaced or incorrect file naming, incorrect handling, incorrect data entry etc.

By establishing a volunteer agreement, organisations can also ensure that young volunteers are able to obtain a letter of reference, making volunteer work desirable for them to undertake.

There are many resources for templates for volunteer agreements as well as additional policy (such as standard OH&S policy) available that can be utilised for each organisation.

You will find a sample volunteer agreement here: as a DOC FileSample Volunteer agreement.docx as a PDF PDF iconSample Volunteer agreement.pdf

Here are copies of the Volunteer documentation used by the Royal Historical Society of Queensland, who are happy to share their work:

Other resources are: