Last month I started working at the Cultural Heritage and Digitisation Service (CHDS) as a Digitisation Operator. Before joining the team, I was working on a large digitisation project at the National Collection of Aerial Photography (NCAP) where some of my colleagues were of the robotic variety, known as ‘Cobots’. Coincidentally, some of the team at the CHDS had met the Cobots as part of the Association for Historical and Fine Art Photography (AHFAP) conference last year.
The Association for Historical and Fine Art Photogapher’s (AHFAP) conference is always a highlight of the year and, alongside 2and3D Photography at the Rijksmuseum and Archiving, it has become one of the must-attend events for any cultural heritage imaging professional. This year we were fortunate that AHFAP took place at the National Museum of Scotland here in Edinburgh, meaning for the first time ever the entire Cultural Heritage Digitisation team could attend!
In February 2022, PhD students Vesna Curlic and Ash Charlton began their digitisation internships in partnership with the University of Edinburgh’s Library and University Collections and the Centre for Data, Culture, and Society. Together, they reflect on the joys and challenges of digitisation.
We were tasked with an internship project that has two main parts – half our time is spent in the Cultural Heritage Digitisation Service’s Digital Imaging Unit (DIU) in the University’s Main Library scanning early volumes of The Student, University of Edinburgh’s student newspaper. The other half of the time, we work to develop a training pathway for the Centre for Data, Culture and Society which will direct people towards resources for undertaking their own digitising projects. This post is part one of two, reflecting on our experiences digitising The Student.
My name is Muminah and I’m about to enter my final year of studying Computer Science and Maths. For the past couple of months I’ve worked as a Digital Asset Management System (DAMS) Metadata Intern for the Uni’s Cultural Heritage Digitisation Service (CHDS) under the Library and Uni Collections (L&UC) department of ISG.
For the past eleven weeks I’ve had the opportunity to intern with the Digital Imaging Unit, working on a project to evaluate the potential of establishing a 3D digitisation service within the department. “3D digitisation” in this sense encompasses everything from the initial production of digital models – using suitable items from across the University Collections – to online display, preservation of 3D data, and 3D printing. The project was roughly organised into three phases: research, testing, and implementation.
Although I worked primarily with Susan Pettigrew (Photographer, DIU) and Mike Boyd (uCreate Manager) I always felt supported by the other Library & University Collections staff; everyone I had the chance to speak to was eager to discuss their own work on top of contributing to the project.
This past Winter 2019/20 the Digital Imaging Unit and Centre for Research Collections Museums teams hosted two student interns to support the development of the new Digital Wall, which opened in the University of Edinburgh’s main Library in September 2019. The students, Dario Lucarini (Napier University) and Tom Hutton (Edinburgh College of Art), were tasked with
Guest post by Meg Dolan (MScR Collections and Curating Practices, 2020) and Keith Bossert (MSc History of the Book, 2020)
This summer we had the opportunity to intern with the Digital Imaging Unit, working under Photographer, Juliette Lichman, and DIU Manager, Carla Arton. Due to COVID-19 we worked remotely to expand and update the DIU’s web presence on the University’s Main Library page, a service development project related to their larger Digitisation as a Service Strategy.
The project was divided into 5 phases:
Phase 1: Pre-Planning and User Experience Research & Analysis
In Phase 1, we viewed the websites of similar digitisation departments across other academic and research institutions. This allowed us to
The Digital Imaging Unit hosts the digitised content it has produced on a site called Image Collections. This site is available for searching, sharing, exporting, and reusing publically available and copyrighted images from the Library and University Collections. Many images have been used for research, teaching, publications and creating new content.
Need some images? Here are some tips for searching Image Collections.
The home page has a tiled look that will allow for you to jump straight into a collection of images (grouped by theme) to browse or to search across all collections using the search box at the top. If you click on a collection tile, it will take you to a collection overview page describing what you will find within that collection. Some collection pages have additional iiif manifest links so you can view an entire book as if reading through it, instead of looking at each page as an individual page. If you decide to browse that collection it will take you to a gallery style view of all the images in that collection. You can increase the number of images that appear at a time and page through to browse the entire collection. You can also use the navigation pane on the left side of the screen to filter based on specific characteristics, such as what, where, who and when.
If you are looking for a specific search term, such as ‘student’, make sure to search across All Collections. Hover over the Collections tab on the top left of the page until
I was delighted to be able to participate in the 4th International Staff Week at the Biblioteki Politechniki Gdańskiej recently. I work as the Senior Photographer for Edinburgh University’s Library and University Collections, so when I saw that the programme included a visit to the Pomeranian Digital Library it looked like a great opportunity. Additionally, this was the home institution of one of the delegates on our own Knowledge Exchange Week in 2018, allowing further development of previous Erasmus links.
There’s no doubt that in our digital age, social media and online presence is crucial to engaging with your customers, audiences or users. Due to the growing demand of higher quality images on these platforms, several of us in the DIU have recently given talks about achieving the best image quality using low-tech solutions. The great thing about phones and tablets is that we’re able to share content to social media from anywhere, creating a sense of immediacy and dynamism. Being able to take great photos and videos with just our phones can be challenging, but knowing the best settings and set-up can help to create great images that will make your posts more engaging.