The UCD Digital Library provides a rich environment for resource discovery, exploration and use. As practitioners, the team as a whole have extensive knowledge and expertise on all aspects of digital library workflows. This section collates the policies, procedures and guidelines, and publishes them online so that all processes are transparent.
We are working to bring you useful information about how to plan a digitisation project, and what you need in order to engage us in the process.
UCD’s Digital Library supports the development of digital collections through the conversion of materials into digital formats and the transfer of born-digital collections.
UCD’s digital library collections facilitate worldwide access to Irish cultural and heritage materials, bringing hidden primary sources to the surface. Digitised collections are available to scholars, researchers, historians, educators and members of the public in an easily accessible and equitable way, free of charge.
Digitising collections can help to save collections from further physical deterioration and so our activities play an important preservation role. We also ensure that the digital artefact itself is preserved.
Enhanced access and preservation are not the only benefits of digitisation. Digitisation gives users new ways of using the collections, supports new analysis, and offers new methods of discovery.
UCD Library embraces the principle of collaboration and partnership and will enter into collaborative agreements with Schools, Research Institutes, Repositories, and external organisations to further our digitisation goals. A Memorandum of Understanding will be drawn up and agreed between both/all for collaborating organisations.
Not everything that we would like to digitise can be digitised; nor can we necessarily accept every born-digital collection that we would like. We operate within constraints of resources such as available staff and time. Below are the criteria used for selection; however, not all criteria need to be met in order for a collection to be included in the Digital Library:
Requests for digitisation of physical collections will be considered by UCD Library’s Digital Library Steering Committee, in conjunction with UCD Library’s Collections Unit. The decision-making process will take into consideration all information collected in the Collection Profile document.
Offers to donate digitised material will be considered in line with our Collections Policy and other relevant policies. Similarly, the Library will consider donations of physical material that are made on the condition that digital copies are made, should these be deemed congruent with the Collections Policy.
Access to the digitised material is an essential part of the wider digitisation process and the following requirements relating specifically to access will inform our digitisation activities:
The Library will provide its own website and online access channels, and support other organisations to provide discovery and access services using our digitised material.
The following categories are not covered by this policy:
Originally published April 2013; updated March 2017
UCD Digital Library uses due diligence to ensure compliance with legal regulations and contracts, including regulations governing the protection of human subjects and informants of ethnographic studies.
The following is a list of useful resources. Further information will be supplied here.
UCD Digital Library is currently authoring comprehensive documentation covering all aspects of its digitisation, digital acquisition, and image processing workflows, including its policies. These will be available here in due course.
Available online through UCD Library is an introductory guide for Digitisation Projects, which includes guidance on Digital Imaging/Digitisation: Digitisation Projects
UCD Digital Library has comprehensive documentation relating to its metadata policy, data dictionary, and cataloguing procedures. These will become available in due course.
The University College Dublin Library is committed to responsible and sustainable management of digital assets held within the UCD Digital Library. It is guided in its preservation mission by principles of trustworthiness, transparency, and digital resource curation. Its objective is to maintain durable digital assets that are secure with regard to both stability and recoverability, that retain their usefulness and usability over time, and that are protected with respect to national and international regulations for data protection.
UCD Digital Library is committed to bit-level preservation, i.e., preserving the bitstream (the binary form) of file assets in its digital repository. Further efforts will be applied, where feasible, to maintain usability of file assets (e.g., preservation of intended "look and feel" of file assets) through provision of specialised interfaces and dissemination services or file format migration.
The UCD Digital Library's long-term preservation strategy is shaped by the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model (ISO 14721:2012) and informed by relevant international standards and emerging best practices.
Efforts will be made to preserve works in any digital format submitted to UCD Digital Library, however, submission in a recommended file format is strongly encouraged in order to facilitate long-term preservation. Please see Technical Information for a list of preferred file formats.
When files in formats other than those listed in Preferred Formats for Data are received, an evaluation will be made whether a derivative file in a more stable or a locally preferred file format can be created. In such cases, the original file and the derivative(s) will be preserved, along with associated descriptive, administrative and preservation metadata for both files.
UCD Digital Library provides long-term access to submitted works, as well as associated descriptive and administrative metadata, by deploying a strategy combining the following:
Persistence in discoverability and in referencing digital resources is supported by assignment of a persistent URL to all resources submitted to the UCD Digital Library, namely, a DataCite Digital Object Identifier (DOI), a CrossRef DOI, or an Archival Resource Key (ARK).
This policy and related preservation activities will be reviewed regularly to ensure that procedures and operations remain current and compliant with international best practices.
Comprehensive documentation regarding the technical infrastructure of UCD Digital Library can be found in the Technical Information panel on the About page. This includes topics such as the systems and infrastructure in place, the discovery servies, including our APIs, the metadata standards used, and our preferred formats when accepting a collection.
UCD Digital Library utilises a variety of publicity tools in order to engage with its users. To date we work with our website, Twitter, Facebook, email, and publicise our activities with various publicity channels.