Further resources
Project surveys and outcomes are regularly uploaded to the EAP website, so do browse through the various project pages there: https://eap.bl.uk/. They will help you when planning a project of your own.
Hill Museum and Manuscript Library downloadable resources (on topics including studio set-up, photography tips, daily steps, camera manuals, software tools etc.): http://www.vhmml.us/Resource/Downloads/
Preservation Advisory Centre guidance booklets on a variety of helpful topics, including: salvaging library and archive collections, moving a library collection, preserving photographic material, managing pests, damaged books, understanding and caring for book bindings, general preservation etc.: http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/stratpolprog/collectioncare/publications/booklets
British Library Collection Care videos for handling items: http://www.bl.uk/aboutus/stratpolprog/collectioncare/publications/videos/index.html
Bülow, A, and Ahmon, J, 2011, Preparing Collections for Digitization. London: Facet Publishing in association with the UK National Archives.
Kominko, M, 2015, From Dust to Digital: Ten Years of the Endangered Archives Programme. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0052. Available to read online and as a PDF download.
APSC: APSC (Advanced Photo System type-C) is an image sensor format used in many high quality digital cameras, including DSLRs. The actual sensor size varies between manufacturers but the sensor area is commonly 40–45% of the area covered by a full-frame sensor. Many APSC cameras have their own range of dedicated lenses but can also use lenses designed for full-frame cameras.
Colour cast: A colour cast is a tint of a particular colour, which is usually unwanted, and which affects the photographic image. Certain sources of light can cause digital photographic files to exhibit colour casts. For example, evening and early morning sunlight may give an overall warm orange-red cast; daylight shade may give a cooler blueish cast, and neon lighting a greenish colour cast. In general, the human eye does not perceive the effect of such variations in colour temperature, because our brains compensate for different light sources. Mixed lighting sources of different colour temperatures cannot be easily compensated for and must be avoided.
Colour temperature: Colour temperature is a measure of a light’s colour. Cooler colours give a bluish white and warmer colours give a yellow to reddish white.
Copy stand: This is a device consisting of a baseboard and column that holds the camera steadily in place directly above an item being digitised.
DSLR: Digital Single Lens Reflex camera.
Full-frame camera: A camera in which the sensor is the same size as a frame of traditional 35mm film.
Gutter: The inside margins closest to the spine of a book, or the blank space between two facing pages of a newsletter or magazine.
JISC: Joint Information Systems Committee.
Listing: The Listing template is an Excel spreadsheet that contains all the descriptive data that will be imported into the British Library cataloguing system.
Macro lens: Macro lenses are optically and mechanically designed for close-up photography. True macro lenses should focus down to life-size, with a reproduction ratio of 1:1, but several macro lenses on the market only focus down to 1:2. (When working with a 1:1 reproduction ratio, a full-frame DSLR will fill the frame with a subject 24mm x 36mm) Macro lenses are designed with a longer than normal focussing barrel to facilitate very close focusing. They are also optically optimised for close working distances. Most currently available macro lenses can focus to infinity and also provide excellent optical quality for normal photography.
The term macro is used rather loosely. Many lenses and zoom lenses offer a ‘macro’ setting. This refers to the ability of the lens to focus closely. Although such lenses with a ‘macro’ facility may focus closely, they often reveal significant problems of field curvature or barrel distortion visible in the image. In contrast, lenses designed specifically for close-up photography minimise these optical problems.
Metadata: In this context it is the descriptive data about the physical items being digitised and helps identification and discovery.
Plastazote: This is a man-made foam that is stable and therefore safe to use when in contact with fragile items.
RAW: A file format, usually proprietary to each camera manufacturer, that stores all the captured image data without compression.
sRGB: sRGB (standard Red Green Blue) is a colour space commonly employed by digital technology, monitors, the internet and in printing. (In contrast, Adobe RGB is a colour space used primarily by the professional photography printing industry. Theoretically, Adobe RGB can represent a wider range (gamut) of colours but demands special software and a detailed understanding of all stages of digital workflow to manage correctly.)
TIFF: Tagged Image File Format. An image file that stores all the data of an image in a ‘lossless’ format; this allows the file to be smaller than RAW files but more detailed than JPEG images.
