The Montana Room at the Parmly Billings Library has many historic books, photos, clippings and personal papers that are valuable assets to researchers.  These items are held on book shelves and in unsecured, unindexed file drawers where they are sifted through by patrons with little supervision by library staff.  Historic documents become missing, damaged by fingerprints and crumble.  Often, librarians discover that pages of books have been removed, making those pages unavailable to future researchers. Building on a small pilot project of previously digitized photographs for the statewide Montana Memory Project, the Library plans to contract with the Western Heritage Center to digitize additional photos in the Montana Room in order to preserve research opportunities, minimize destruction of valuable historical resources and provide easily accessible content. Once digitized, described and indexed, the collection will be available on the internet, a delivery portal that is becoming increasingly vital to library services.  The Digitization Service Agreement will require the Contractor to assess 1375 digital photos and physical photos in the Montana Room to determine the significance of their inclusion in the Montana Memory Project Billings Pioneers collection.  After assessment, the Contractor will provide descriptive metadata about the digital photos to the Library.  The Contractor will save the metadata in an Excel spreadsheet.  Metadata required by the Library includes: Photo File Name, Subject, Description, Photo Date or Approximate Date.    The contract for services will be reviewed at the end of the project for possible renewal until the collection is fully digitized.

The City Council may:

• Approve the award of the Digitization Service Agreement; or,
• Not approve the award of the Digitization Service Agreement and not complete the project at this time.

The total cost of this Service Agreement will be $25,000.  The source of funding for this project is Library reserves.

Staff recommends that the City Council approve the Digitization Service Agreement with the Western Heritage Center.