Digitisation

BT Archives: Digitisation of Historic Posters

By Miguel Rodrigues  |  2009/04/01 14:43 Posted in Digitisation  |  Comments (0)

We’ve just completed digitisation of a small series of interesting General Post Office posters for the BT Archives; all of which hover around the WW2 period (1930s to 1950s).

These were the six remaining items that still required digitisation and generation of suitable access copies, in a larger batch of posters that will be made available through BT Archives’ online catalogue.

celebration_2.jpg

“Celebration: Send a greetings telegram” poster, circa 1951 (British Telecommunications Archive reference: PRD 981). Approximate dimensions: 38x25cm.

© 2009 “BT” British Telecommunications plc
All rights reserved.

celebration_2_crop.jpg

100% crop showing part of greetings telegram example in the centre

Even though tiny at well under two numerals, this is nevertheless a varied series Read More »

ULCC/Portico/DPC consortium to undertake JISC preservation study

By Richard M. Davis  |  2008/10/29 12:00 Posted in All, Digitisation  |  Comments (0)

JISC Digitisation ProjectsWe’ve just heard that a consortium of ULCC, Portico and the Digital Preservation Coalition has been awarded the contract by JISC to undertake a Preservation Study of recent digitisation activities.

The JISC Digitisation Programme has made a wide variety of valuable resources digitally accessible, including:

  • British Newspapers (1620-1900)
  • Newsfilm Online
  • First World War Poetry
  • Newspaper Cartoons
  • Welsh Periodicals
  • Pre Raphaelite drawings
  • East London Theatre Archive

More information about these, and other projects, is available on the JISC Digitisation web page.

The project will review the preservation plans and processes of the sixteen projects funded under Phase 2 of the JISC Digitisation Programme, and identify any medium or long-term access risks to the digitised content. It will also produce recommendations – for individual projects and for JISC as a whole – for processes and strategies to mitigate the risks, and case studies which would be helpful to the broader community.

This is an exciting opportunity for us to apply and extend the experience we have gained working on a range of projects in the field, including the European Visual Archive Market-validation Project (EVAMP) and risk assessments for the recently launched Newsfilm Online project. We will shortly be creating an online home to for the project collaboration and development, and will use DA Blog and the DigiPresSurvey Blog (on JISCInvolve) to keep you updated.

Digitising William Morris’s Lantern Slides (Part 3)

By Miguel Rodrigues  |  2008/07/31 16:23 Posted in Digitisation  |  Comments (0)

We stumbled upon fascinating facets of lantern slide creation, assembly and ageing processes during digitisation of the William Morris collection. Use of forensic resolutions, true colour and high bit depths in the capture process (2400ppi true optical/RGB 48bit) allowed us to pick out what we think are some singularly remarkable hand painted slides (slides that were generated by direct application of ink to the glass), and unearth an array of decay and fading patterns.

This 1st example of a hand-coloured slide depicts the Tudor Kelmscott Manor, “The Country Home of William Morris”, and surrounding scenery. (Click on images to enlarge in a new page and click the back button to return to the post)

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Of notice are the rudimentary nature of the colouring work and the 2 occurrences highlighted in pink (enlarged below).

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DCC discussions on image formats

By Richard M. Davis  |  2008/07/04 00:14 Posted in All, Digitisation  |  Comments (2)

Rich pickings in a couple of fascinating posts on the DCC Digital Curation Blog, in which Chris Rusbridge summarises recent discussions on the DCC-Associates email list about appropriate photo image file formats for preservation, specifically TIFF, RAW and JPEG 2000. A sibling post also discusses the merits of RAW versus TIFF from the perspective of different users and uses.

The proprietary nature of RAW formats (an emerging OpenRAW standard notwithstanding) and the relative newness on the block of JPEG 2000 would both tend to bolster the longstanding preference for TIFF, but as Chris’s posts make clear, each preservation project should nevertheless weigh the options based on its own requirements and resources.

If in doubt, the “keep everything” approach is attractive, as ever, but – in spite of the old mantras about ever-cheaper filestore – the implications for storage space and management are potentially very costly once one enters the world of Terabytes and Petabytes. Read More »

Digitising William Morris’s Lantern Slides (Part 1)

By Joanne Anthony  |  2008/03/12 17:49 Posted in Digitisation  |  Comments (1)
William Morris lantern slide showing wallpaper design
William Morris Lantern Slide
© 2008 The William Morris Society,
All rights reserved.

Over the coming week we’ll be working with the William Morris Society to digitise their unique collection of lantern slides.

Digitising the slides will finally help to open up their access to a wider audience, who may then be able to help provide important information about the provenance and content of individual slides. It’s suspected that one of the images may even be a unique portrait of William Morris’s daughter, May Morris, and that lantern slide images of the Kelmscott House residence may be the only surviving photographic depiction of the residence; the same residence where Morris founded the Kelmscott Press in 1890, and where he died on 3 October 1896 (now the present headquarters of the William Morris Society). Other unique items may also surface as a result of digitising this remarkable collection.

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