The presentation describes the process of digitization of Nevada newspapers for the NDNP project. It outlines the workflow and some challenges the team faced during the first year of the project.

1. Tales of an Awardee:
Year One Digitizing Nevada Newspapers
National Digital Newspaper Conference 2015
September, 16 2015 Washington, DC
Jason Vaughan and Cory Lampert
Nevada Digital Newspaper Program

2. You Can Do It!

3. Kicking Off the Project: Advisory Board and Project Team
• Confirm Advisory Board and welcome them to the project
• Refer back to your research on your state newspaper inventories
and microfilm status
• Decide if initial microfilm quality evaluation will inform the
process and how
• Provide the criteria and context (selection guidelines from NDNP
as well as some practical considerations)
• Provide project overview with everyone’s roles and timeline

4. Slow and Steady: The Sample Reel
• Isn’t that NDNP wiki amazing??
• Hire staff and show them that wiki!
• Hopefully, you have a vendor…
• Sample reel is your chance to finally figure out the process;
you won’t really know what you’re doing – it’s okay!
• Doesn’t matter what the content is: this is for you to learn
• Can be helpful to learn the basics:
• operate a microfilm reader (buy one?)
• get to know reel vs. page metadata
• practice collating with other’s worksheets (service
copies)
• Vendor orientation reveals all sorts of secrets (like the DVV
and other tools)
• LC provides webinars and very helpful staff – use them and
the other awardees at this phase to establish your
workflow

5. Up To Speed: Collation and Batches
• It’s all about the spreadsheets; there are lots of details and ways
to talk about the project; lots of shipping/receiving and dates
• Get a sense at this phase who does what, how fast each phase
moves, and any potential bottlenecks
• Regular communication keeps everyone on track (weekly
meetings)
• Reports / LC Timeline is reasonable and helpful
• Site visit clarified lots of questions in this phase
• Celebrate milestones with the team

6. Building the Digital Newspaper: Vendors and QC
• Get to know your vendor’s process, workflow tools, and
preferred communication methods
• Production will follow the steps of the sample reel but be
prepared for the scale to increase
• Time to get to know the DVV (try it first before using
vendor tools) and discern the difference between VERIFY
and VALIDATE 
• Quality control process can be daunting at first, but there
are some great resources and tools to help you out
(counting files, ThumbsPlus)
• Focus on verifying files, image quality and OCR
• Work with vendor on questions, concerns, data issues, and
tracking progress

7. PHASE ONE: Send title list to microfilm vendor;
duplication and technical analysis, metadata; SHIP to you
PHASE TWO: Receive, bar code, do reel metadata, collate,
prepare batch; SHIP to vendor
PHASE THREE: Receive deliverables from vendor, verify
with DVV, do QC; validate and SHIP to LC
PHASE FOUR: Wait for LC to approve batch and load into
ChronAm, CELEBRATE, … and repeat.

8. Tips and Tricks

9. Looking Ahead

10. Questions?
Nevada Digital Newspaper Program
Jason Vaughan
jason.vaughan@unlv.ed
Cory Lampert
cory.lampert@unlv.edu
Very Special Thanks to our Project Team:
Dana Bullinger, NDNP Project Coordinator
Melissa Stoner, NDNP Project Specialist
@nvndp
Blog: https://nvdnp.wordpress.com/