Digitization at the Archdioses of Malta

Digitization is perhaps the post prevalent issue faced by contemporary archivists.  While transferring items to digital formats can result in enormous benefits for both users and institutions, it also creates several challenges.

The most important benefit is the increased access to archives at the researchers' disposal.  Researchers are given searching and browsing facilities that enable them to find required information with greater speed and accuracy.  In fact most researchers of the Archbishop's Curia's website are from France, UK, Malta, Australia, Bahrain and Spain.  The website has a high usage rate ad reached 167,000 hits.  An average of 12.38 minutes is spent by each user.  Pages of manuscripts can be clearly seen through a 600dpi PDF and can be downloaded for a fee of 50c per page. 

                                      Image taken from http://archives.maltadiocese.org/

The most difficult challenge is that the process is time-consuming and the creation and maintenance of digital libraries is very expensive.  When images are clear, scanning can be done automatically.  However when images are a bit blurred, the process has to be regulated manually.  Planning also takes a significant amount of time, eg. the planning phase at the Curia took 15 months while the project itself was carried out in 10 months. 

Money is needed for production, for material access and for preservation of digital information.  To make the situation more difficult, since the Curia is a non-profit organization, budget issues have to be handled very carefully.