In this episode of Wider Lens, the first podcast dedicated to cultural heritage digitization, Digital Transitions sits down with Martina Hoffmann, Head of Digitization Services at the Swiss National Library, for a wide-ranging conversation recorded live in front of an international audience. Martina took an unconventional path into the field, arriving not through fine arts or photography but through project administration on one of the Netherlands' first mass digitization initiatives. Fifteen years later, she leads digitization services for a national library and still runs her own independent consultancy on the side.

The conversation covers why digitization standards matter, how the ISO 19264-1 standard differs from guidelines like FADGI and Metamorfoze, what a real quality assurance process looks like in practice, the most common mistakes labs make when building workflows, how to train new digitization staff with no formal education path to draw on, the differences in cross-institutional collaboration across Europe versus the U.S., and a candid take on where AI genuinely helps (and where it doesn't) in preservation-grade imaging. The episode closes with a lightning round and live audience Q&A.

About Martina Hoffmann
Martina Hoffmann is Head of Digitization Services at the **Swiss National Library**, a role she has held for nearly six years, and works internationally as an independent consultant on cultural heritage digitization and quality assurance workflows. Before Switzerland, she served as Senior Production Manager for Digitization at the **National Library of the Netherlands** (Metamorfoze) and as Operations Manager of QA for Digitized Products at the **National Archives of the Netherlands**. She also hosts a monthly community meetup now marking its sixth anniversary.

Conversation Highlights

• Why "everybody wants everything online yesterday," and how the field's understanding of production and process has matured
• Why standards remove subjectivity: comparing ISO 19264-1 to guidelines like FADGI and Metamorfoze
• The real cost conversation: why meeting a standard isn't necessarily more expensive — it depends on what you're actually trying to produce
• What a genuine quality assurance process covers, and the most common mistake labs make (trusting target-reading software instead of your own eyes)
• Training digitization staff with no formal education path, and the real priority: handling fragile originals safely
• Where AI actually helps in cultural heritage work — and where Martina firmly draws the line
• Audience Q&A

#CulturalHeritage #Digitization #DigitalPreservation #Archives #Libraries #Museums #GLAM #ISOStandards #FADGI #Metamorfoze #QualityAssurance #SwissNationalLibrary #WiderLensPodcast #DigitalTransitions

EPISODE 3: Michelle Gollehon, Utah Historical Society

AI Meets the Archive: How Utah Historical Society Is Using Google Gemini to Unlock 118,000 Card Catalog Records

What happens when a digitization project is too big for any human team to tackle and AI becomes the only practical path forward?

In this episode of Wider Lens, we sit down with Michelle Gollehon, Digital Asset Specialist at the Utah Historical Society, for a fascinating conversation about one of the most ambitious and innovative AI-assisted digitization projects in the field right now.

With the Utah Historical Society preparing to move its collections into the new Museum of Utah, Michelle and her team faced a pressing challenge: an entire legacy card catalog — 118,000 physical index cards — that needed to be digitized and made searchable before the move. Captured on DT's Versa imaging system and transcribed using Google Gemini Pro, the project offers a real-world blueprint for how AI can unlock research resources that would otherwise remain inaccessible indefinitely. By Gemini's own estimate, the approach saved approximately 4.5 years of manual labor and $176,000 in staffing costs.

In this episode, we unpack:

• How a collection move to the Museum of Utah sparked an unexpected AI pilot project
• Why AI transcription is fundamentally different from traditional OCR
• The prompt engineering journey: from early hallucinations to asking Gemini to write its own prompt
• The practical limits of working in batches and other hidden bottlenecks in AI-assisted digitization workflows
• The tribal flags project: digitizing the flags of Utah's eight Indigenous tribes for museum display using a Mylar sandwich technique on a wide-format scanner
• And much more…

Whether you're managing a card catalog of your own or just beginning to explore AI's role in your digitization program, this episode offers concrete lessons from someone who figured it out by doing it.

🎧 Listen now for one of the most practical, on-the-ground accounts of AI-assisted digitization you'll find anywhere in the cultural heritage field.

And as always, we welcome feedback, comments, and questions. Let us know what you'd like to hear on this podcast, or if you'd like to be a guest. Email us at: widerlens@digitaltransitions.com

Additional Notes from this episode:

• Utah Historical Society: https://history.utah.gov/
• Museum of Utah (opening soon): https://www.museumsofutah.org/
• Google Gemini Pro: https://gemini.google.com/
• Gaussian Splatting (mentioned as an emerging 3D capture method): https://repo-sam.inria.fr/fungraph/3d-gaussian-splatting/
• ilovepdf.com (free PDF compression tool mentioned in the episode): https://www.ilovepdf.com/
• DT Versa Imaging System: https://heritage-digitaltransitions.com/product-catalog/
• DT's Online Digitization Certification Courses: https://heritage-digitaltransitions.com/dt-digitization-certification-program/
• DT's "Digitization Program Planning Guide" Bundle: https://heritage-digitaltransitions.com/product/cultural-heritage-digitization-planning-bundle-solutions-guide-digitization-program-planning-guide-pdf/

EPISODE 2: "INSIDE DT" EDITION, Ben Cort Talks Technical Problem Solving in Cultural Heritage Digitization

What does it actually take to solve the toughest digitization challenges — in the field, under pressure, and with no room for error?

In this special Inside DT edition of Wider Lens, we sit down with Ben Cort, Digital Transitions’ Cultural Heritage Technical Support Specialist, for a focused, behind-the-scenes look at the technical expertise that powers preservation-grade digitization.

In this episode, we unpack:

• The real-world challenges institutions face when digitizing complex and fragile collections
• What it takes to troubleshoot and optimize high-performance digitization systems
• How technical decisions impact image quality, workflow efficiency, and long-term preservation outcomes
• Lessons learned from working directly with institutions in the field
• The intersection of engineering, photography, and conservation in modern digitization
• Why experience and problem-solving matter as much as hardware and software
• We also explore the human side of technical support — from unexpected edge cases to the mindset required to solve problems quickly and effectively in high-stakes environments.

This shorter Inside DT format highlights the people behind the work — the specialists who help institutions implement, maintain, and evolve their digitization programs.

Whether you’re running a digitization lab, evaluating new systems, or simply want a deeper understanding of what goes on behind the scenes, this episode offers a practical look at the expertise required to do this work at the highest level.

🎧 Listen now to go inside DT — and see how technical problem solving drives successful digitization programs.

And as always, we welcome feedback, comments, and questions. Let us know what you'd like to hear on this podcast, or if you'd like to be a guest. Email us at: widerlens@digitaltransitions.com

Additional Notes from this episode:

• Constantin Brâncuși Art: https://www.wikiart.org/en/constantin-brancusi
• DT's Online Digitization Certification Courses: https://heritage-digitaltransitions.com/dt-digitization-certification-program/
• DT's "Digitization Program Planning Guide" Bundle: https://heritage-digitaltransitions.com/product/cultural-heritage-digitization-planning-bundle-solutions-guide-digitization-program-planning-guide-pdf/