I've built digital collections on Omeka  and on SobekCM (both on that
helpful foss4lib list) Omeka is definitely easy to get up and running and
you can even host a small collection free on the omeka.net site. The
drawback is in the back-end management - if you want to import a lot of
items in bulk or do mass-updating or work with non-Dublin Core xml metadata
or any of those sorts of management things you'll be much happier with
something else. I have been using Sobek for a while - it's open-source and
industrial-strength. It does require a steeper learning curve, though it's
less steep than the Fedora-based repositories. Also the documentation is
top-notch very detailed. Also the developer is now running a hosting
service with reasonable fees if you are running a medium-to-large sized
institutional collection they are at sobekdigital.com

One other extremely helpful piece of software that I wish I'd know about
long ago is called VueScan https://www.hamrick.com/ it's billed as "the
software that should have shipped with your scanner" it costs $40 and is
worth every penny.

Good luck!

On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 6:13 PM, Matthew Sherman <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> There are a few options you can go with.
> https://foss4lib.org/package-type/digital-repository has a nice list of
> open source solutions.  Just remember with open source you need to have
> some tech savy staff to support the software.  I know a lot of people who
> like Omeka for free digital collection software.  I am using DSpace right
> now for an institutional repository, it can be used for digital collections
> but it is not the best since that was not what it was built for.  ContentDM
> is a popular pay for solution.  Still, I would check out that list, and
> demo Omeka on their site.  There are plenty of other considerations you
> need to make as well but these should help start you off specifically with
> the questions you asked.
>
> On Tue, Oct 14, 2014 at 4:55 PM, P.G. <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > Anyone has experience in digitizing archival materials? I need your
> > recommendations/suggestions on how we can start with our digitization. We
> > need to build a searchable website so the public can access our materials
> > of images, publications and media files.
> >
> > What platform did you use? Open-source or fee-base? What is your
> experience
> > using it?
> >
> > Basically, we started using Sharepoint but at this point, I believe it is
> > only good for sharing of internal documents. We are on a limited budget
> so
> > we may need to host it on our own server as well.
> >
> > Any feedback or persons to contact for more info is highly appreciated.
> > Thanks.
> >
> > Chris
> >
>