Aspiration to implementation: building an enterprise digitization capability at the University of Melbourne

Abstract

The University of Melbourne has a rich, complex, and ultimately voluminous, array of cultural, scholarly and research material that is of great interest and value to the University community, scholarly researchers and the global community. Our guiding strategy “Melbourne’s Scholarly Information Future is a ten-year strategy that identifies in its aspirations the importance of building effective access to the rich cultural, scholarly and research collections of the University and acknowledges the critical role that digitisation plays in achieving this vision.

Since the strategy endorsement in 2008 we have progressively moved from a digitisation environment that was uncoordinated, ad hoc and lacked centralised expertise that led to a proliferation of isolated, under-resourced areas producing inconsistent and indifferent quality images to our goal of an exemplar digitisation framework, program and enterprise capability for the University to leverage.

This article outlines our journey and the approach in building this capability in a challenging economic environment, the engagement strategies to gain support and funding, skills and equipment as well as the unique challenges of the digitisation of a diverse array of University collections. Secondly it will also explore digitisation as transformation and outline some of the infinite and extraordinary possibilities created from digitised content of Library Collections.