About IDI
History of the Illinois Digitization Institute
IDI Partners
The Illinois Digitization Institute (IDI) started in 2001 with a LSTA (Library Services and Technology Act) grant from the Illinois State Library. Trevor Jones, Project Coordinator for the IDI, originally created a two-week online course and several one-day workshops on digitization. Working in conjunction with the Illinois State Library, the online course was given to recipients of LSTA digitization grants and the workshops were offered to various library and museum organizations in the Midwest.
In 2003 the University of Illinois Library, Illinois State Library, and Illinois Heritage Association received a National Leadership Grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services. This funding allowed the IDI to provide more digitization training through a program called Basics and Beyond. The idea was based on the original courses given by Jones, and expanded them to give cultural heritage institutions a choice of different digitization training opportunities at different price points and with different time commitments.
Jones chose to return to the museum community in 2003 and Amy Maroso was hired to take over as Project Coordinator for the new endeavor. She expanded on the work Jones originally did and lengthened the two-week online course into three weeks and created content for and presented the workshops and online courses.
The Basics and Beyond training was broken into three different “tracks” based on the type of training cultural heritage institutions said most interested them. Track 1 provided a one-day basic digitization workshop and Tracks 2 and 3 were Web-based courses. Track 2 was a three-week online course significantly expanding upon the information provided in the Track 1 course. Track 3 combined the three week online course with an intensive two-day workshop held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) campus.
Current Courses
The IMLS grant funding period ended in 2006 and the IDI received further funding from the Illinois State Library to continue training, now called Beyond the Basics. Working in conjunction with the Illinois State Library and the Illinois Heritage Association, the IDI continues to offer workshops and online training in digitization. The courses have changed to include a two-day workshop that incorporates basic digitization information along with a hands-on element, allowing participants to work with scanners, digital cameras, and various software. The IDI also continues to offer the three-week, online training and this has been coupled with an optional, two-day workshop that allows participants to work with scanning equipment, software, optical character recognition, and to create metadata records in CONTENTdm.
The IDI is part of the Digital Services and Development Unit at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library. Amy Maroso is Project Coordinator for Beyond the Basics and the primary IDI contact. Nuala Koetter is Head of the Digital Services and Development Unit.