The mission of the DCPC is to promote the development of digital collections among WRLC libraries by providing a shared facility to consolidate project management, information technology, and digital conversion expertise in a production environment.

The DCPC provides staff and systems to support five primary services, in conjunction with library staff:

• plan and manage digitizing projects
• design digital collections
• design and enter descriptive and other metadata
• scan or otherwise input materials according to specifications
• convert machine-readable finding aids if available

The DCPC is particularly suited to working collaboratively with libraries on small to medium-sized digitizing projects. These projects often include a relatively high degree of internal variety within the collection, requiring individualized handling and interpretation (consistent with the WRLC digital library framework). The DCPC's current in-house scanning operation is best-suited for conversion of the most common types of special collections materials: single-leaf flat text, graphic materials, black-and-white or sepia photographs, and slides.

DCPC staff can also work with libraries on projects where it may be more appropriate to outsource the digital conversion to a service bureau, either because the materials are well-suited to batch processing or because they require specialized equipment (materials such as microforms, audio or video, or very large quantities of printed matter). In such cases, DCPC can provide the project management, design, and descriptive metadata services, and can load the resulting files into the ALADIN digital library.

For more details on how to prepare and develop digital collections using the WRLC's DCPC service, see the DCPC Guidebook