Questions For Your Yearbook Digitization Contractor Before Hiring

By Carolyn Wallace


Yearbooks are meant to preserve memories for individuals or institutions. Yearbook digitization enables you to transform the materials and easily share them with affected persons. Some of the memories are irreplaceable and should be preserved by ensuring that quality is maintained. Here are questions that will guide you when vetting vendors to ensure that you get quality.

What quality of images will be produced? Quality of images is measured in DPI or dots-per-inch or PPI which is commonly referred to as Pixels-per-inch. You should get images that are 400 PPI or more. The higher the PPI, the better the quality of images. This will also save you from having to scan the images again in future.

What other projects have you handled? Request to see the other yearbooks that have been scanned. It gives you an idea of the quality of work to expect. Other than waste time and resources on scanning only to revisit the work, it is advisable that you work with a vendor whose delivery is ascertained. This means that the vendor has successfully digitized other yearbooks and produced quality. It will save you from disappointment.

In which format will the final book be presented? There are numerous gadgets used in accessing digital files. The book should therefore be produced in a format that is easy to access without reducing the quality of images or making them inaccessible on other platforms. Conversion should also be easy as well as sharing on different platforms. The most preferred formats are PDF and JPEG for their ability to preserve quality of images.

How are the original materials handled and preserved? You need to send the original pictures and materials to the vendor. Some of these images and documents only exist as a single copy. This means that once it has been damaged, it will never be recovered. The vendor must also guarantee that your pages will not be folded or the images defaced so that the original quality can be preserved. The vendor should provide insurance in case the materials are damaged.

What is the turnaround time for getting the materials back? Libraries and institutions with a single year book require the materials to be available to other users. This means that they must be returned as soon as possible. The vendor must promise and deliver the work as soon as possible to avoid inconvenience to other users.

How will the materials be ordered? Ordering is important because it captures the chronology of events. It also makes your work easier to follow. In some cases, multiple images are captured on a single page. There must be a sense of order which makes it attractive to follow your work. Agree on the numbering and order of images to avoid confusion and improve on the usability of your work.

The vendor should incorporate the latest technology that makes the use of such a book easy. Some of the features that should be incorporated include Optical Character Recognition/OCR that allows information on the images to be found through a digital search. By choosing a reliable vendor with the skills and experience, you will end up with an impressive and high quality book.




About the Author: