Creating digital replicas of collection items has become part of the core work of museums. Whether you’re looking to add images to your collections database, create beautiful online exhibitions or share images on social media, this guide provides practical information for museums on creating good images of their collections using a scanner or a digital camera.

Who’s it for?

If you’re looking to start a digitisation project, refresh your knowledge or help others in your organisation learn about the basics you may find this a useful reference. This concise, easy-to-read guide includes:

  • Overviews to planning & prioritisation
  • Tips about equipment
  • Links to further trusted resources
  • A glossary of key terminology
Content

The guide provides a quick-fire overview of key issues such as:

  • Where to start: planning and prioritisation
  • Approaches to digitising artefacts and archives (scanner or digital camera?): Digitising with a scanner, choosing a scanner, how scanners work, scanned file types; Digitising with a digital camera, about the lens
  • File formats
  • Taking a digital photograph
  • Downloading and saving images
  • Editing Images
  • Digital Asset Management
  • Budgeting for Digitisation

The guide was written by Natasha Hutcheson for the Collections Trust with the support of the Arts Council England (2014).

Clicking the link on this page will allow you to download this resource as a PDF.

Source: Collections Trust