In 2004, when we applied for the METRO grant for digitization, the library at Pratt Institute’s Brooklyn campus had a Visual Resources Center that, since 1997, had been digitizing its collection of over 160,000 slides for teaching and research purposes. We had staff and student workers with training and experience in digitization, as well as dedicated space, equipment, and technical support. Our digitized images were available online, so we had some acquaintance with the issues surrounding online collections. For us, therefore, it was not so much a question of beginning a digitization initiative as it was beginning a new phase in our alreadyexisting digitization program. Our hardware was no longer state of the art. The evolution of metadata schemas and best practices, such as Western States Digital Imaging Best Practices (later revised by the Bibliographic Center for Research as BCR’s CDP Digital Imaging Best Practices) (Bibliographic Center for Research [BCR], 2008), meant that our own protocols were inconsistent if not out of date: they worked for us, but they were not truly in step with the most current professional standards. We envisioned a METRO grant as an opportunity to update and tighten our practices, and believed that the resulting increase in efficiency would generate momentum to expand our digitization program in order to better meet the increasing expectations of our users.