Digital Preservation Services

Digital collections are growing—and so are the challenges of preserving and managing them. Whether you're just starting to digitize your materials or looking to strengthen your existing systems, CCAHA’s Digital Preservation Services can help. We offer expert, practical support to make your collections accessible, secure, and sustainable for the future.

It’s normal to feel overwhelmed, but with the right plan in place, you can confidently preserve digital materials for generations to come.

Digital Preservation Assessment

CCAHA’s Digital Preservation Assessment provides collecting organizations with a clear roadmap for preserving their digital collections now and into the future. Through this customized service, CCAHA’s Digital Archives Specialist works closely with your team to evaluate your current practices and recommend practical steps to strengthen digital preservation efforts.

This service looks at the full lifecycle of your digital materials, whether they are scanned from physical items or born-digital, like emails, photographs, or documents created on a computer.

What’s Included:

• A pre-visit questionnaire that focuses on your goals for digital collections and long-term access
• A half- or full-day site visit to see your setup and talk with staff, volunteers, and board members
  • A review of your current resources, including staffing, training, and budget
  • An evaluation of your policies and workflows around digitization, access, copyright, and disaster planning
  • An assessment of your technical tools, including file formats, metadata, and storage systems
• A follow-up meeting six months after receiving the report, to discuss any plans to implement report recommendations

You’ll receive a clear, detailed report with tailored recommendations to help you improve your digital preservation practices. This document can also support grant applications or help you make the case for more staff, better software tools, or improved systems. CCAHA will also help you to connect these recommendations to your larger organizational goals, so your digital preservation efforts become part of your long-term strategy.

Digitization Plan

Thinking about digitizing your collection, but not sure where to start? Digitization isn’t just about creating digital files; it’s about making sure your collections are preserved and accessible for the long term. 

Digital public access can be essential for widening your collections’ usage. Putting your collections online opens the door for researchers, students, and the public to engage with your content in new and meaningful ways. In fact, a 2013 study found that historic newspapers that had been digitized and made available online were cited 10 times more than similar newspapers that were not available online.[1]

CCAHA’s Digitization Plan service is designed to guide you through the entire process, whether you’re just starting out or trying to improve your existing digitization efforts. CCAHA’s Digital Archives Specialist will work with your organization to create a customized, practical plan tailored to your collection and your goals. During the plan creation process, CCAHA staff will guide your organization through policy development, including a larger discussion of public access and designated community. The final document will include a practical, step-by-step guide for digitizing a pilot collection and a flexible framework for future digitization endeavors.

The Digitization Plan service includes:

• Help establishing policies and priorities, such as what to digitize first and why
• Training on how to prepare and handle fragile materials safely during digitization
• Recommendations for selecting equipment and setting up an imaging station
• Step-by-step workflows to make your digitization process consistent and efficient, with built-in quality control
• Advice on file formats, standards, and naming conventions
• Guidance on how to create and manage metadata, including the use of controlled vocabularies and metadata schemas
• A big-picture look at public access, including who your users are and how they’ll find and use your digital content

[1] Milligan, I. (December 2013). Illusionary order: Online databases, Optical Character Recognition, and Canadian history, 1997-2010. Canadian Historical Review, 94(4), 540–569.

Case Study: Empowering a Historic Cemetery with a Sustainable Digitization Plan

Project Overview

Laurel Hill Cemetery, a National Historic Landmark established in 1836, holds nearly two centuries of burial records, lot maps, deeds, and correspondence that document Philadelphia’s rich cultural and social history. Like many historic cemeteries, Laurel Hill faced growing concerns over the fragility and inaccessibility of its archival materials but lacked a practical, in-house method for digitizing them safely and sustainably.

Because their mission is the preservation of the cemetery itself, none of the staff had experience with large-scale digitization of fragile records. To complicate matters, the cemetery had absorbed other organizations, such as local funeral homes, but these records remained in their original locations. Laurel Hill staff felt overwhelmed, unsure of where to begin, and confused by the recommendations they found online.

CCAHA’s services were engaged to develop a pilot digitization project and a scalable framework that would empower Laurel Hill’s staff and volunteers to carry the work forward independently, with confidence and care.

CCAHA’s Approach: From Pilot to Practice*
 

1. Assessment & Planning

The process began with an in-person visit to Laurel Hill by CCAHA’s Digital Archives Specialist, which allowed her to sit down with cemetery staff and discuss their biggest goals for—and worries about—large-scale digitization. The group explored how the cemetery’s mission and strategic goals could be supported by digital collections. Staff also provided insight into how they used the archival materials internally and what was of greatest interest to their patrons and researchers.

Next, the Digital Archives Specialist and Laurel Hill staff physically reviewed the historical collections to identify and prioritize high-risk, high-value records. They selected two types of materials for the pilot digitization project: one visual collection—a group of glass negatives—and one text-based collection—a series of records related to the families who originally purchased family plots. This variety allowed cemetery staff to gain experience with different handling techniques, imaging requirements, and metadata fields.

2. Pilot Digitization Project: Step-by-Step Design
 

Preparation & Handling Protocols

• Training staff and volunteers in safe handling techniques

• Introducing the use of supports and cradles for fragile bindings

• Recommending conservation measures for damaged items

Scanning & Equipment Recommendations

• Identifying affordable scanners and cameras suited to the collection materials

• Creating image quality guidelines (e.g., 600 dpi TIFF for preservation, JPEG for access)

• Designing a controlled digitization space with lighting and temperature considerations

Metadata & File Management

• Developing a simplified metadata template using Dublin Core along with cemetery-specific fields (e.g., plot number, interment date)

• Creating standardized file naming conventions for future consistency

• Organizing digital files with a logical directory structure for easy access and backup

Documentation & Training

• Producing a user-friendly digitization manual with step-by-step workflows

• Providing in-person training sessions for staff and volunteers

• Establishing a quality control checklist for review and version tracking

3. Building the Long-Term Framework

With the successful completion of the pilot, CCAHA delivered a comprehensive digitization framework that Laurel Hill staff could expand upon at their own pace. This included:

• A set of priorities for digitizing future record sets (e.g., lot maps, deeds, correspondence)

• Templates for creating official policies on digitization and digital collections

• Guidelines for selecting a digitization vendor for specific formats that cannot be handled in-house

• Recommendations for cloud storage, access platforms (e.g., Omeka), and digital preservation practices

Results & Impact

• Laurel Hill completed its first digitization project in-house, following safe and professional standards

• Staff and volunteers gained the skills and confidence to continue digitization efforts independently

• A structured framework is now in place to ensure sustainable digital stewardship for years to come

• The project has strengthened Laurel Hill’s ability to share its records with researchers, genealogists, and the public

Ready to start a pilot project at your organization? 

You can schedule a free 30-minute introductory meeting here to discuss your digitization project or digital preservation initiative and how CCAHA could assist you.