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Bridging the Digital Gap (Part II)

By isabelle.reynolds-logue.13, on 18 July 2019

In my last post I explained what I have been up to for the last 9 months as the Bridging the Digital Gap trainee at UCL. Now, I will show you some of my favourite digitisation projects so far…

The UCL College Collection

The UCL College Collection contains, among other things, photographs of the exterior and interior of UCL buildings.

This photograph looking towards Gordon Street (Gordon Square is signified by the trees in the background) features some graffiti from the mid-twentieth century: ‘Merry Xmas. Love peace anarchy.’

Technicians seen posing on the ruins of the Great Hall at UCL in the 1950s.

The issue desk at the Main Library post-1951.

Bomb damage to the Main Library after the Second World War.

The Little Magazines Collection

The Little Magazines Collection was set up in 1964 to gather together little magazines from the UK, North America, Commonwealth and Europe. We have defined Little Magazines as “those which publish creative, often innovative work, with little or no regard for commercial gain.”

Cover of ‘Gargoyle’ Number Two, 1921.

A page from ‘The Owl: A Miscellany’ 1919.

Jewish Pamphlets

I worked on a joint project with Dr. Maria Kiladi to digitise the Jewish Pamphlets Collection.

One challenge with these was that some pamphlets were read from right to left, when in Hebrew, as opposed to ones written in English. Another challenge was that I am unable to read Hebrew, so with pages entirely in Hebrew it was not easy to know which way round they were supposed to be. Additionally, the pages containing Hebrew characters were automatically rotated by the OCR software when generating PDFs, so I had to manually go through these and change them individually.

The entire collection can be found in our digital collections repository.

The cover of one of the pamphlets.

Library Exhibition

Again working alongside Maria, we digitised material that was going to be on display for the exhibition, ‘From Small Library Beginnings: a brief history of UCL Library Services.’ The photographs are online but were also printed in the exhibition catalogue.

1935 Block Plan of University College London.

Dante’s Divine Comedy

This copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy features illustrations that go across a double page spread. This is not straightforward to capture with one camera pointing down towards the item, as the print is not flat, and cannot be made flat. There was also a problem of shadow appearing in the centre along the gutter. In order to capture the print as best I could, I ended up taking two separate images, on of each side of the book so that there is even illumination, and merging them in Photoshop.

You can read more about this item in this related blog post.

Slade Archive Reader

Finally, the Slade Archive Reader is now available as four fully digitised, searchable PDFs.

My first thought was, why, if this is a printed, word processed document, do we not have a digital copy already? Unfortunately this is often the case with older word processed material. So, we have the task of re-digitising something that was already digital! Once we began looking at the volumes, it was clear that digitising the Slade Archive Reader would not be without its fair share of challenges. Primarily, the four volumes are bound quite tightly, which made it hard for me to keep the pages flat when photographing them. This curvature of the pages leads to a distortion of the text, which in turn makes it difficult for the OCR software to pick up.

You can browse all of our digital collections online.

UCL Special Collections is committed to making digitised content available online. Although every effort has been made to identify and contact rights holders, we recognise that sometimes material published online may be in breach of copyright laws, contain sensitive personal data, or include content that may be regarded as obscene or defamatory.

If you are a rights holder and are concerned that you have found material on our Digital Collections repository for which you have not given permission, or that is not covered by a limitation or exception in national law, please contact us at spec.coll@ucl.ac.uk

Bridging the Digital Gap (Part I)

By isabelle.reynolds-logue.13, on 16 July 2019

I joined UCL in October 2018 as the Bridging the Digital Gap trainee from The National Archives. I have been learning about all things digital in relation to archives, working with UCL’s Special Collections and the Institute of Education archives. In order for me to produce meaningful work with the material, I first needed to understand a bit more about archive repositories and what they contain. As part of my training, The National Archives runs a Moodle course where I have learned about archives, records and repositories, as well as about a key problem facing holders of archives today: digital preservation.

My work so far has ranged from cataloguing to digitising material. A key part of my work at UCL has been digitisation. I photograph or scan original items so that they can be put online and be made more accessible to a wider audience. In addition to accessibility, digitisation aids in preservation. The copies of the original items generated through digitisation are archived so that we have a digital version in case anything happens to the original, or if, for example, it becomes too fragile for readers to view in person.

A digitised photograph of the Wilkins portico from the UCL College Collection c1900s.

Most of the time I use a Canon EOS5D camera alongside a Kaiser RS1 copy stand and lights for digitisation. For some material I use an Epson12000XL flatbed scanner. Some items cannot be completely flattened for scanning, for example rare books, as this would cause severe damage to the item. In these cases, I will always use the camera and copy stand. In digitisation, we aim to get the most true to life image of the item whilst handling and moving the item as little as possible, in order to cause the least damage or deterioration to it. As digitisation requires handling and placing items in particular ways, we must liaise with the conservation team prior to digitisation, to make sure the item is in a suitable condition to be used. If an item is badly torn, falling apart, or very dirty, for example, it would have to be conserved before digitisation.

Once all of this is sorted out, I capture the photographs in RAW before editing them in Adobe Photoshop and saving them as high quality TIFF files for archiving, and JP2 files for use online. For some items with text, it is possible to use OCR software such as Nuance to generate searchable PDFs. However, some text proves too tricky for the software to pick up, for example unusual fonts or handwriting, so we don’t use it every time. However, we have begun to work with the OCR for handwriting software, Transkribus, so watch this space!

Now that you have an overview of what I have been up to, stay tuned for the next post where I will show you some of my favourite projects so far…

Managing Photos In The Archive

By Robert J Winckworth, on 16 February 2018

On Friday 9th February, I attended a day course ‘Managing Photographs in the Archive’, run by The Archive-Skills Consultancy Ltd (http://www.archive-skills.com/) presented by Margaret Crockett, Janet Foster and Dr. Jessamy Harvey.

Attendees from as far afield as Singapore and the Western Isles were present, and the day started by defining what archives are, and when photographs might be considered archives.

UCL Special Collections holds a wide range of photographs, including those donated to us from other UCL departments (Estates, Development Office, as well others that no longer exist). Whilst we have begun to survey them, a great deal more work is necessary to better streamline and catalogue what photographs we have and in what format.

Context is vital in determining when photographs are considered to have archival value, and we have a great number that do not have any accompanying documentation, annotations or dates. We also have multiple photographs of the same event or royal visit (just how many photographs of Princess Anne do you need?), and photographs of staff parties from 20 years ago that are not of archival value, no matter how interesting the clothes or hairstyles might be.

 

Aerial photo of UCL – Copyright of the Central Aerophoto Co. Ltd

 

The photograph above is not dated, but does however have information on the reverse relating to who took it. Looking more closely at the buildings and doing some research online, we may be able to determine when it was taken. Also, in this circumstance, we know that it is an aerial photograph showing the Wilkins Building, Gower Street frontage and what is now the Cruciform Building.

Other photographs we have are a little more difficult. We have several boxes of albums of various events (dinners, farewell parties, receptions) all donated from the Secretary’s Office. In some, but not all cases, the albums are labelled with the particular event. However, we do not know who took the photos and a lot of dedication will go into finding out who everyone is. This leads to further questions, such as is it really worth keeping photographs of staff leaving parties?

Photo albums donated by the Secretary’s Office for various events held in 1989.

 

One of the most interesting and challenging sessions during the day was Identifying Photographic Processes, including ambrotype, daguerreotype and tintype. Identifying the historical photographic process is essential for preservation, as each format has its own characteristics, and using appropriate packaging is vital. Furthermore, identifying the process can be extremely useful for dating the photograph when no other information is available.

We were fortunate to have the use of pocket microscopes (retailing at a very reasonable price so I was told) to identify the layers of photographs and see if paper fibres were visible on magnification. One could also look at any damage such as fading or abrasion.

Our final morning session looked at preservation, including the packaging, storing and handling of photographs, and I sensed that I could easily spend what is left of our budget on enclosures, four flap folders and more Melinex.

Slide from Copyright session, reproduced with permission of The Archive-Skills Consultancy Ltd.

The afternoon session on Managing Copyright in Photographs was of most interest. I find copyright a complex area at the best of times, but it seems more intricate relating to photographs. The session covered copyright ownership, copyright duration, photographs of known and unknown authorship and due diligence. The session outlined the main issues facing archivists with dealing with copyright, and highlighted a lot of further reading and case studies, which will be most useful. Copyright in general is something that I feel I need to learn more about, particularly with the enquiries we receive regarding the use of our images.

Overall, the day was most enlightening, with a lot of content to take on board. Managing our photographic collection is one of my priorities for the year ahead. This will include surveying what we hold, appraising and weeding the photographs held by UCL Records (an awful lot of weeding) and and ordering preservation material for photographs where necessary.

Main Library from 1965-66. Photo by Associated Graphic Arts, from an album donated from the Provost’s Office.