So you have a collection that you would like to digitise… but what does that actually mean?
Digitisation is the process of making a digital surrogate of physical material. There are many reasons to digitise a collection: to share with a wider audience, to help preserve material, to increase access, to use collections in different ways, to supplement disaster recovery plans, and to make material searchable.
What can be digitised?
Essentially anything that can be made relatively flat can be digitised. Letters, documents, photos, manuscripts, postcards, volumes, and negatives can all be imaged with either a flatbed scanner or a digital camera. We’ve even digitised wallpaper in situ! Objects, like museum artefacts, usually require a different kind of image capturing.
Ideally, material to be digitised has already been archived and conserved, so that the digital image is of the best representation of the original material – that is, with dirt, mould, and metal bindings already removed.
What can I do with digitised material?
Lots of things! You can upload the images to your website or catalogue, or share a digital album with loved ones. You can use the images in emails, newsletters, and social media posts, or for exhibition posters, educational material, or publications. You can send them to researchers who aren’t able to come see the original material themselves. You can use the digital images as a reference to transcribe the text using Transkribus or use OCR software on a PDF to make it text-searchable. You can make a backup of the files and rest easier knowing your collection has a digital backup in case disaster ever strikes.
What is the process?
The specifics of the digitisation process change depending on the type and condition of the material and the needs of the project, but the process has the same general structure. Let’s use a collection of family letters and negative film strips as an example.
The letters and negatives are in envelopes labeled by year. The letters are captured with an overhead camera and the negatives with a flatbed scanner. These images are the digital captures of the original material, and are master TIFF files. TIFF files are the best for digital preservation because they are more resistant to degradation over time and are big files that can hold a lot of detail.
However, while big files are great for digital preservation, they’re not as useful for sharing the images, either in an email or on a Flickr page you made for your family collection. Surrogate files, like JPGs and PDFs, can be made from the master TIFFs. These are still quality images, but are much easier to share and post.
If there is a catalogue name for the original material, the name of the digital images will be similar. In this example, a two-page letter in the folder labelled ‘1973’ could be named Murphy Family Letters_1973_0001 and Murphy Family Letters_1973_0002. This naming organises the digital files and mirrors the physical organisation of the collection.
A note on digital preservation: just like physical material, digital files also have to be stored and maintained properly to make sure they last! It’s best to make a backup or two of the master and surrogate files in a few different places. Check on these files every few years to make sure they aren’t degrading and that you can still open them. Unlike boxes of archived letters, a hard drive full of digitised images can’t be left untouched on a shelf for ten years!
Ready to digitise your collection?
Get in touch with us to find a bespoke solution to your specific digitisation needs!