Clemson University officially established its digitization initiative in
the fall of 2007 by establishing a library unit for Digital Initiatives and
hiring a unit head. Most large academic libraries like Clemson
established digitization initiatives in the 1990s or early 2000s, but
there are distinct advantages to beginning an initiative later. One
distinct advantage was that we could learn from others and from the
best practices and standards in an already established field. Another
advantage is that we could begin to think about the blending of
digitization initiatives, institutional repository development, data
curation and the preservation of digital assets -- in other words, we
began thinking in terms of data curation instead of simply digitization.
A third, and possibly the greatest advantage, was that we could join
existing collaboratives and be instrumental in starting others. In our
opinion, collaboration is the key to building sustainable digital
initiatives, so we wanted to make sure we took advantage of
collaborative opportunities from the start.