Pratt Institute: A Historical Snapshot of Campus and Area 303
Introduction
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that our own protocols were inconsistent if not out of date: they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