Majority of the libraries all around the world are digitizing its resources. Digitizing the library resources is a great way to increase access to the library information and it also help communicate the library’s value. But with staff time and resources, it may be difficult to in house digitization process and is challenging to undertake digitization initiatives. Therefore hiring a professional document conversion services helps digitizing the library resources.
Digitization In Harvard Law School Library
The Harvard law school library has around 40 million pages of case law that needs to be digitized. It is the second largest collection in the country following the one at the Library of Congress. It has civil and criminal case laws from every state and federal court.
Adam Ziegler the managing director of the school’s Library Innovation Lab told the Boston’s National Public Radio Station that “we want law, as expressed in court decisions to be widely distributed and as and as available as possible online to promote access to justice by means of legal information”.
The digitization process is funded by Ravel Law, a legal search analytics and visualization platform. According to the Harvard’s website Harvard agreed to give Ravel Law exclusive access to the digitized cases and the company makes the information available to the public for free. Daniel Lewis the company’s CEO told WBUR report that the digitized information can show legal trends and track bias among judges.
The process of digitization is little old fashioned, the books to be scanned are shipped to the lab from a Worcester Country storage facility and physically unbound by digitization specialists. The pages are scanned and metadata about the cases, names, judges, court locations and dates is applied. The next step is to seal the pages in plastic with their original binding and kept in storage at a limestone cave in Kentucky.
Prior to 1997 digital projects were associated with large academic libraries but now an increasing number of public libraries are now joining in the endeavour and many document conversion services are now available for digitization the materials in the library.
