Our Metrics

What do we mean when we say that we are digitizing a million documents and 1.4 million pages from books?

We've based these numbers on estimates:

• We've used best-practice archival metrics to determine that we will be digitizing 650 linear feet for the project with an average of 1,500 pieces of paper per each linear foot. But this is only an estimate. There are all sorts of materials in the boxes, ranging from postcards—and even smaller scraps of paper—to posters. There may be more or less than 1,500 "pages" per linear foot.
• Our goal is to digitize 12,200 books, which we've estimated as having an average of 200 pages each. But some books may have more than 200 pages; and others less than 200 pages.  

There are still other factors to consider in qualifying these estimates. For instance, what is a "document"? It can range from one side of a page to a manuscript hundreds of pages long. Our estimate is based on pages and not an intellectual definition of documents. We quantify each folder of material by how many pages it holds, not how many separate documents are within.

There are further complications. Some pages are blank on the reverse and will result in 1 digital image; others are filled on both sides and will yield 2 digital images. The final number of digital images won't correspond exactly to how many documents or even pages have been processed and digitized for the project.

As we digitize more and more documents and books, the estimated numbers will be revised and become more actual than estimated. And the final numbers for the project might be a little different than those estimated at the outset.