This presentation highlights our experiences with our first digitization project: digitizing 300 doctoral dissertations in-house for an institutional repository. We start at the beginning: selecting team members and identifying their roles, choosing the right repository system, and identifying a manageable first project. After this background information, we detail our current project. We include administrative information such as how we have partnered with our Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences and contacted alumni for permission to digitize their dissertations. We also discuss technical information and decisions such as software and equipment used to scan and create searchable text, using OCR technology to convert abstracts, deciding what metadata to collect, and how to re-use data from our OPAC. And finally we describe workflow and skill level of staff members and the coordination required between the Library’s Systems and Technical Services departments.

Presented November 6, 2006, at Scanning Forum 2006 meeting, Charlottesville, VA.