Services
Digitisation

Book your free consultation with our digitisation experts

DIGITAL PRESERVATION SERVICES

UK Archiving offers specialised digitisation services tailored to support digital preservation of museum and heritage collections, ensuring consistent, high-quality, and accessible digital records for long-term safeguarding.

What type of material do you want to preserve?

Bound Volumes
Artefacts & Objects
Microfilm & Microfiche
Documents & Ephemera
Photographic Mediums
Newspapers and Magazines
Large Formats Materials

Bound Volumes Description

We digitise materials using Phase One digital cameras, capturing them into RAW image files. RAW files hold unprocessed data and settings from the camera, allowing us to customise images to your needs. We convert them to accessible formats like TIFF, JPEG, or PNG, and create PDF surrogates when needed. Camera settings, like lens, exposure, and colour, can be adjusted per your request, and we can accommodate any file naming conventions.

Bound Manuscripts

Digitising bound manuscripts can involve working with various paper types and volume structures, accommodating complex foldouts. Using self-compensating book cradles and glass platens, we ensure flat, crisp images while interleaving for optimal quality. We capture cover-to-cover content, including spines, and can process single or double pages, splitting pages as necessary. Disbinding services are available upon request.

Visit our Additional Services page for more information.
Digitisation Service for Bound Manuscripts

Bound Volumes – Books, Journals, Burial Records

Digitising an array of bound volumes can involve employing various book cradles, including self-compensating ones with spine bars, V-cradles, and back supporters, along with glass platens when needed. Our process ensures flat, aligned images of each page, including covers, spines, foldouts, and loose materials within volumes. We offer single or double-page processing, with page splitting as needed. Disbinding services are available upon request.

Visit our Additional Services page for more information.
Digitisation Service for Bound Volumes - books, journals, burial records

Artefacts and Objects

We digitise materials using Phase One digital cameras, capturing them into RAW image files. RAW files hold unprocessed data and settings from the camera, allowing us to customise images to your needs. We convert them to accessible formats like TIFF, JPEG, or PNG, and create PDF surrogates when needed. Camera settings, like lens, exposure, and colour, can be adjusted per your request, and we can accommodate any file naming conventions.

Artefacts and Objects

UK Archiving possesses the capability to digitise a wide range of 3D objects and artefacts, even those that are old or fragile. Our specialised equipment, including light tents, tripods, and mannequins for clothing items, allow for complete adaptability in preserving artefacts. We can adjust background colours to complement the object and capture from various angles to fully represent all dimensions of a 3D object.

Digitisation Service for artefacts and objects

Microfilm and Microfiche

Using our specialised scanning equipment, we can digitise your microfilm and microfiche, converting them into digital image formats such as TIFF, JPG, PDF, and more. This process guarantees digital accessibility for your microfilm and microfiche collections. We have the capability to digitise microfilm and microfiche of various types and sizes.

Microfilm and Microfiche

We have the facilities to scan your microfilm and microfiche into digital image formats, using our specialised scanning equipment. We can convert film into TIFF, JPG, PDF and more, allowing your microfilm and microfiche to be digitally accessible. We can digitise microfilm and microfiche of various types and sizes:

Digitisation Service for Microfilm and Microfiche of a historical newspaper
16mm microfiche
16mm Microfiche A roughly A6-sized microfiche, comprised of negative or positive strips. Each strip can hold up to 60-70 single pages maximum.
35mm microfiche
35mm Microfiche A roughly A6-sized microfiche, comprised of negative or positive strips. Each strip can hold up to 12 single pages maximum.
COM microfiche
COM Microfiche A Computer Output Microfiche, holds up to 270 pages per fiche in an 18x15 grid of negative or positive strips. Usually used to preserve manuals and the like.
COMBI microfiche
COMBI Microfiche A combination of 35mm and 16mm microfiche strips. Typically comprises of three 35mm images in one strip and 36 16mm images over three strips.
16mm microfilm
16mm Microfilm A 100ft continuous roll of negative or positive film wound onto a reel. 16mm microfilm can hold up to approximately 2500-3000 images.
35mm microfilms
35mm Microfilm A 100ft continuous roll of negative or positive film wound onto a reel. 35mm microfilm can hold up to approximately 1100 single page images.

Photographic Mediums

We digitise materials using Phase One digital cameras, capturing them into RAW image files. RAW files hold unprocessed data and settings from the camera, allowing us to customise images to your needs. We convert them to accessible formats like TIFF, JPEG, or PNG, and create PDF surrogates when needed. Camera settings, like lens, exposure, and colour, can be adjusted per your request, and we can accommodate any file naming conventions.

Photographs

To capture photographs, we typically utilise 55mm or macro lenses along with a flat camera bed. Items can be placed under glass to ensure a flat final image. We handle photographs with cotton gloves and can capture text on the back of photographs as well as the photographs themselves.

Digitisation Service for old and historical photographs

Glass Plate Negatives, 35mm Slides and Negatives

With our extensive experience in digitising photographic slides and negatives, we craft customised camera setups for optimal capture. This usually involves creating bespoke masks to fit the items, illuminating them from below, and employing macro lenses to capture intricate details. For negatives, polarity inversion can produce positive images. We always handle photographic materials with care, wearing cotton gloves.

Digitisation Service for glass plate negatives, 35mm slides and negatives

Lantern Slides

We also offer digitisation services for lantern slides, employing customised camera setups for superior capture quality. Typically, we create bespoke masks for the items, illuminate them from below, above, or both, and use macro lenses for detailed capture. We handle slides with cotton gloves and can include text written on the slide border or present a clean image, depending on customer preferences.

Digitisation Service for lanter slides

Documents and Ephemera

We digitise materials using Phase One digital cameras, capturing them into RAW image files. RAW files hold unprocessed data and settings from the camera, allowing us to customise images to your needs. We convert them to accessible formats like TIFF, JPEG, or PNG, and create PDF surrogates when needed. Camera settings, like lens, exposure, and colour, can be adjusted per your request, and we can accommodate any file naming conventions.

Documents, Letters, Postcards, Leaflets etc.

For most unbound or loose paper items, we employ a flat camera bed and can capture under glass to ensure a flat final image. When digitising items like leaflets or documents with multiple pages, we can interleave them to clearly display each page. Our processing options include single pages, double page spreads, and page splitting.

Digitisation Service for Documents and Letters

Newspapers, Magazines and Comics

We digitise materials using Phase One digital cameras, capturing them into RAW image files. RAW files hold unprocessed data and settings from the camera, allowing us to customise images to your needs. We convert them to accessible formats like TIFF, JPEG, or PNG, and create PDF surrogates when needed. Camera settings, like lens, exposure, and colour, can be adjusted per your request, and we can accommodate any file naming conventions.

Newspapers, Magazines, Comics etc.

Whether bound, unbound, broadsheet, or tabloid, UK Archiving ensures top-tier digitisation for newspapers, magazines, and comics.

For unbound materials, we typically utilise flat camera beds and can capture items under glass to ensure a flat final image. When digitising bound newspapers, we employ various book cradles, most commonly a self-compensating book cradle with spine bars, ensuring cover-to-cover capture, including the spine as needed.

We offer interleaving to clearly display each page and can process items as single pages, double page spreads, and can page split when needed.

Visit our Additional Services page for more information.
Digitisation Service for Newspapers and Magazines

Large Format Materials

We digitise materials using Phase One digital cameras, capturing them into RAW image files. RAW files hold unprocessed data and settings from the camera, allowing us to customise images to your needs. We convert them to accessible formats like TIFF, JPEG, or PNG, and create PDF surrogates when needed. Camera settings, like lens, exposure, and colour, can be adjusted per your request, and we can accommodate any file naming conventions.

Large Format Materials - Maps, Plans, Posters etc.

We possess the capacity to digitise items ranging from A2 to A0 in size and can modify our flat camera beds to suit larger formats. For items surpassing A0, we can capture them in sections and seamlessly stitch the images to recreate the original item digitally.

Digitisation Service for Architectural Map

CANNOT FIND YOUR MATERIAL LISTED ABOVE?

Let's have a chat and see how UK Archiving can assist you.

Historical Newspapers on Scanning Machine ready to be digitised by UK Archiving

Start Your Digital Preservation Journey with UK Archiving

Whatever materials you need to preserve, UK Archiving has the skill, equipment, and expertise to digitise your items and preserve them in a convenient and high-quality digital format.

Our staff will take the utmost care to handle and capture any materials you have and produce crisp, consistent images that you can convert, transport, and share easily for many years to come. We have spent the last 30 years honing our craft and becoming a professional and reputable name in the preservation industry.

Contact

Cannot find your requirements listed above?

Does your preservation project have specific requirements that are not listed here?

Let's connect and ensure your heritage items can be digitised by UK Archiving.

Chat to our experts

Speak with our team of digitisation and microfilm experts.

info@ukarchiving.co.uk

Visit us

Visit our digitisation studio in Edinburgh.

View on Google Maps

Call us

Monday - Friday from 8:45am to 4:45pm.

0131 560 2449