Digital sustainability
Libraries and archives regularly digitise material in order to both facilitate remote access, and aid the continued preservation of the item, by reducing the handling of the original. Digitisation allows us to share material with students and colleagues online via the UL Digital Library, to use the images in publication, and even to analyse the material in new ways which are not possible in their original form.
However, a digitised copy of an archival item is exactly that – a copy. It does not replace the original. This means there are now two copies of the item to preserve. It isn’t possible, or desirable, to digitise and maintain a digital copy for every item in our collections. Moreover, the storage of massive amounts of ‘data’ indefinitely can result in the use significant amounts of energy and water. For these reasons, digital curation or ‘appraisal’ is just as important as physical curation when it comes to sustainability in archives and special collections.
For today, we have images of the Digitisation Lab in the library, one of the many cameras found in the lab and of the digitisation of a scrapbook in the Lab’s book scanner.
(click image to zoom)
For more information on the different steps and considerations in digitising material, please see the ‘Digital Foundations’ LibGuide here.
© All images held at Glucksman Library. Please contact us for copyright information and permission to reproduce.
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