How we approach a digitisation project
1. Inventory
The content partner makes an inventory of the content that needs digitising. Structured inventories for specific carriers or sectors are often made in collaboration with partners such as CINEMATEK or other Flemish expertise centres and support centres. The figures collected in this phase are not exact yet, but provide a good enough starting point.
2. Tender
We use the inventory to assess the priorities and scope of digitisation projects, taking into account our available resources and the extent to which certain carrier types are at risk. We also explore the market if necessary.
Then we move on to the tender procedure, drawing up the tender dossier to explain the process and all the necessary technical conditions and various appendices in consultation with international experts and our own content partners. Following careful analysis of the candidates and their offers with a panel of experts, we then appoint an external digitisation company to digitise the content.
The tender procedure always takes place in collaboration with the content partners involved and independent experts. Digitisation costs are covered by meemoo. You can see tender dossiers from previous projects here.
3. Grouping
We can keep the cost of digitisation projects down by grouping together content stored on the same type of carrier but from different partners – without any reduction in quality.
4. Execution
We prepare the logistical process in consultation with the relevant content partners and digitisation company. The content partners register their carriers in the meemoo registration system and package them so they’re ready to be picked up by the digitisation company. The digitisation takes place with special attention paid to preserving quality and in accordance with the technical standards described in the specifications. The carriers are then returned to the content partners, and we save the digitised files in the meemoo archive system.
5. Quality control
Once the digitised files have been delivered, there are three rounds of quality control: the digitisation company runs its own internal quality control processes, meemoo performs a number of automatic checks when the content enters our archive, and our content partners carry out a manual control of their own images and audio.
6. Evaluation
A large quantity of data is collected throughout the registration and digitisation process – not just about the carriers themselves, but also about the digitisation process. At the end of the project we analyse this data and include it in a clear and comprehensive final report that is made available to everyone involved.
We also keep a record of who has performed each step of the digitisation, when they performed it, what equipment they used, and what the outcome was. This gives us a good overview of the whole process so we can adapt it where necessary, and allows content partners to keep track of everything in the registration system.