The College of Humanities and Social Sciences purchased a Special Collections book scanner for New College Library in 2015, with the aim of enabling digitisation of our unique Special Collections. Since then we’ve been working to get Special Collections digitisation workflows established and procedures in place that will allow us to work with student employees and volunteers to achieve our digitisation goals.
In summer 2016 Information Services Group Innovation project funding allowed us to employ a part time student intern. Her role was a proof of concept role, to test out scanning a variety of different materials from New College Library’s Special Collections and to develop practical guidelines and documentation for on-site digitisation.
Benefits of this role:
- Student experience : Enables students to have hands on experience with unique collections
- Preservation: Digital copies created allow preservation of unique originals
- Security : Reduces need for Special Collections items to travel to Main Library for digitisation
- Open Access : Supports the University’s Open Access agenda by enabling freely available access to unique content
We’ll be sharing the results of our projects on these pages.
Christine Love-Rodgers – Academic Support Librarian, Divinity, University of Edinburgh