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Sarah Mason and Ross Genat on digitising the Library's collection

Join photographers Sarah and Ross from the collection digitisation team and step back to 1996, the year digitised images were first transferred to the Library's online catalogue.

'Digitisation allows easy access to our collection and is available to anyone in the world. It also protects our collection from over-handling.'

– Ross Genat

From analogue video discs and flatbed scanners to today's megapixel cameras , see how digital technology's equipment and processes have changed over the past 20 years to totally transform our collection and catalogue. The Library’s photographic work is now entirely digital, from the tiny to the large scale, paper-based to 3D realia.

Sarah and Ross share insights into the specialised lighting and equipment that has enabled the team to digitise 53,000 glass plate negatives and lantern slides, for example, and the scanners that have captured 1.5 million items since 2007, including large maps and charts.

The digitisation team is also responsible for cataloguing the resulting images, to ensure the material is discoverable.