Allan_BioDigiCon2023.pptx

Abstract

As we enter the tenth year of the Digital Collections Programme at the Natural History Museum, London we have seen an increase in the scale and diversity of our mass digitisation activities, with almost 1.15 million objects digitised from 45 projects across 14 different collection and preservation types. The digitisation team began with two staff members but rapidly increased, over a two year period, to seven, ultimately reaching nine members a few years later. This increase in team size meant we had greater capacity to run simultaneous projects, expand digitisation activities to include collections with more complex needs, expand team knowledge through training, be more reactive to external funding opportunities, support more public engagement activities etc. With this increase in the programme’s activities, outputs and resources, there was also an increase in the volume and complexity of our documentation, which we had to ensure would remain sustainable, and relevant, over time without becoming arduous. In this talk we share and discuss some of the processes and approaches that we have found most effective: Continually review documents and the documenting process, making improvements where necessary; Standardise documentation across projects and activities by using templates for routine documentation, i.e. project proposals, output recording sheets, reports, datasets etc.; Master files with key information, such as an overview, with metrics, for completed, active and future projects, a risks and issues log etc.; Automate metric capture for use in project monitoring, forecasting, output reporting etc.; Reduce redundancy wherever possible.</p