I have spent some time over the past couple of days considering the final course project and the challenge of collecting digital artifacts, objects, and networks of information.

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) publishes a Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections, and I would like to submit it to all of you as an example of building standards for our course project collection.

The site contains several links relevant to building our own standards for the project. For each of their principles, the organization stresses the importance of developing a policy prior to the initiation of any collection project. NISO provides a solid list of policies already in existence. The list seems like a great place to start developing our own standards of how to collect digital or born-digital materials.

The organization also maintains principles on the acquisition, maintenance and storage of objects and metadata. While the resources for digitized materials is quite detailed, the list of born-digital object strategies [on the same page] does not specifically address issues of archiving web sites, blogs, wikis, fan communities or other networked collaborative environments.

Finally, the site provides recommendations for launching initiatives. Several of the resources point to standard project management guidelines, and the site underscores the importance of marketing and long-term planning when considering how an initiative might grow.

[Crossposted to Collecting New Media blog]