Digital Scholarship

Choosing a Platform for your Digital Collection

The following is a list of factors to consider when choosing a platform for your digital collection. The various responses listed represent the strengths and weaknesses of different platforms. Our platform matrix shows these factors for a variety of available on-campus and hosted platforms.

  1. How is your collection organized?
    1. using nested folders and file-name conventions; or
    2. using searchable metadata that describes the digital objects (e.g., the way a library catalog describes the books in a library)
  2. Do you need your collection to be discoverable by search engines?
    1. Yes
    2. No
  3. Do you want Creative Commons support for your collection?
    1. Yes, I want to share my assets in some fashion.
    2. No, I want to restrict use of my assets.
  4. What kinds of digital objects are in the collection?
    1. text or documents like docx or PDF/A
    2. images
    3. audio or video
    4. data in csv or other text-based format
    5. data in proprietary formats (e.g., databases, SAS .sas or SPSS .sav)
  5. Who needs view to the digital collection?
    1. just you
    2. current students and faculty collaborators
    3. collaborators who are not at Wesleyan
    4. the general public
    5. no one (storage only)
  6. Who needs to add to or author the collection?
    1. just you
    2. current students and faculty collaborators
    3. collaborators who are not at Wesleyan
    4. the general public
  7. Upload speed consideration: how big are your digital objects?
    1. smaller than 2 GB
    2. larger than 2 GB
  8. Will the collection be exhibited in some fashion?
    1. no, presentation options are not needed
    2. yes, some form of exhibition and contextualizing will be needed
  9. If the digital collection includes time-based media, such as audio or video files, is downloading of the full file allowed or not? This is generally a copyright consideration.
    1. yes, downloading of the file is permitted
    2. no, downloading of the file is not permitted
  10. How much storage space is needed (over time)?
    1. less than 10 GB
    2. more than 10 GB
  11. Will the digital objects be references or displayed in websites outside of the platform where they are stored (such as a website)?
    1. yes
    2. no