JANUARY 2025
Welcome to the UK Archiving Blog Launch
It’s a new year (Happy Hogmanay!), and since the launch of our lovely new website, we’ve been working away, preparing to share the projects and stories we have been collecting over the last 31 years. So, now that 2025 is officially here, we’re excited to start this new project, making regular blog posts (or at least semi-regular, we do have a lot of preservation work to do!) to tell you all about what we do here at UK Archiving.

So, what is UK Archiving?
We are a small and dedicated team based in Edinburgh, Scotland, devoted to preserving heritage items using archival imaging techniques. We use digital photography and microfilm to preserve all sorts of documents and volumes, from deeds to textiles, newspapers to 3D objects.
Preserving historical items requires specialist equipment, expertise, and time that different organisations might not have the facilities to set up in-house. But that does not mean that those items should go without!
Preserving archival collections is vitally important, and at UK Archiving, we have the equipment and knowledge to preserve heritage items to top-quality standards. The work we do means that archives, libraries, and organisations can safely store their precious items, and digital and/or microfilm versions that we produce can be used in their stead for years to come. We have preserved a variety of fascinating items over the years and are passionate about the work we do.
This blog is a wonderful opportunity to explain some of the fundamentals of our work in more detail – to explain a bit more about what archival preservation actually is, and why we love it so much.
What exactly is preservation?
Preservation is simply finding ways to make sure important objects last for as long as possible. At UK Archiving, we do this using archival imaging; taking high quality photographs of objects which can be studied and used instead of the original. We have two methods we use to do this: digitisation, and microfilm preservation.
Digitisation is probably a more recognisable method to most – we use high-quality digital cameras to capture heritage items, which can then be used by our clients to study their items in more depth and share them more widely with their own customers and stakeholders.
Microfilm is unfortunately a rarer form of preservation in the 21st century, but at UK Archiving we believe that it is still an incredibly important preservation method. It is the method that was used before digital preservation was possible and is essentially rather similar; using specialised film cameras, we photograph items onto film reels that our clients can easily store and view and can even scan into a digital format if you want the best of both worlds!
We have been preserving heritage items using both methods for several decades now and love to discuss (at length) the merits of both digital and microfilm. We will no doubt dedicate future posts to a more in-depth look at the benefits of each, so stay tuned!
But it isn’t just about the equipment and the process; we are a close-knit team of people with a lot of passion about heritage, and many stories about our adventures.
Who are UK Archiving?
Well, the person writing this post right now is me, Amy. Hello! I am acting as the steward of this little blog and am going to be creating most of the content for it going forward. I say ‘most of’ because we are a team, and I want everyone at UK Archiving to have a chance to tell their stories and share their passion here too.
Our Edinburgh team is led by our two brilliant managers who you will hear frequent mention of here: David, our general manager, and our technical manager (and camera wizard), Sharon. Then, there’s our crew of Imaging Services Operators, who all joined the team in the last three years: Sander, Morgan, and Melissa, and me. We all work on an array of projects at UK Archiving, but we all have our specialties and favourite bits of the job.
The joy of working for a myriad of clients is that there are always new and exciting heritage items coming into our offices, like handwritten letters from iconic historical figures, centuries-old documents that have rarely been touched, and weird and wonderful bits of history that are often forgotten about.
We plan to use this blog as a platform to tell you in our own words what working at UK Archiving is like, the ins and outs of the preservation work that we do, and memorable moments from our company’s history and the unique projects we have had a hand in. Alongside this, we want to give you a window into what it is like to work in the heritage sector, from fast-paced projects to silly office shenanigans (of which there are many).
Here’s a preview of some of the upcoming blog posts you can expect from UK Archiving:
- The Morpeth Roll: an iconic digitisation project of a profoundly important document
- Microfilm on the Silver Screen: Working for BBC’s The Crown
- A Day in the Life of a UK Archiving Imaging Services Operator
- What Lurks in the Dark Room?: A Halloween Special
So stay tuned! In the meantime, if you want more information about what we do, please explore the rest of our website and consider getting in touch with us.
by Amy McVeigh | 23 Jan 2025