It has been a long–held desire for the CHDS to offer a 3D Digitisation service, and although not 100% there yet, we are several steps closer. Back in 2021, Connor Wimblett did an internship with us looking into the feasibility of offering 3D for the Heritage Collections. You can find out more by reading his blog here.
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.
I was delighted to take on the challenge of helping photograph the University’s collection of notebooks of geologist Sir Charles Lyell, and there’s a bit more to photographing 300 notebooks than one might imagine. The Cultural Heritage Digitisation Service is a fantastic team of people, and quickly welcomed me onboard. Prior to this posting, I’ve enjoyed a varied background, including photographing the contents of National Trust for Scotland castles as part of a major digitisation project Reveal, plus Polar and Northern Lights photography aboard expedition cruise ships.
In November 2019 the Library excitedly welcomed Sir Charles Lyell’s two hundred and ninety-four notebooks into its Special Collections. With support and funding from leading institutions, groups and donations pledged from over 1000 individuals, this tectonic acquisition meant the notebooks were able to stay in the UK and join the Library’s existing collection of Lyell-related materials. As part of the DIU team, I was lucky enough to photograph Lyell’s notebooks, working with the world’s finest quality cameras to digitise a previously private collection into the public sphere and beyond.