Government, Military & Education Archives
Case Study Three
Digitisation of a Unique Collection of Army Service Corps (ASC) Postcards
THE CORPS AND MUSEUM
With some 16,000 serving personnel and formed in 1993, these Corps comprise
some 16 per cent of the Regular British Army. They are supported by some
7,000 TA soldiers – over 17 per cent of the TA’s strength. These Corps are a
unique organisation within the British Army, offering a wide range of
employment, specialisation, and fulfils a crucial role both in peacetime and
during operations.
The Museum, which houses the Corps heritage, was established as the
Regimental Museum in 1995 for the newly formed Corps. It tells the story of
support to the British Army from 13th Century to the present.
PROJECT BACKGROUND
With a Corps incorporating such a large proportion of the British Army and in
its varied nature of duties and activities, the museum generates a huge amount of
interest in its general history.
The Museum contacted TownsWeb Archiving with a view to discussing the
digitisation of a large and unique postcard collection. This collection had been
meticulously assembled and cared for by an Ex-Officer. The view is that this
valuable collection would be of significant National and International interest
and as such consideration was being made with regard to passing it to a National
museum for public display.
Retaining ‘replication’ quality imagery of the postcards was seen as essential
and a pre-requisite to the handing over the postcards.
AIMS OF THE PROJECT
Paul Sugden of TownsWeb Archiving Ltd had various discussions with the
Museum to first establish the short and long term requirements of the images
produced from the digitisation and secondly to discuss the project in terms of
digitisation location, timeframes and deadlines.
These conversations were useful in establishing the following:
- An approximate timescale to digitise the collection
- The physical location where the digitisation could take place
- The file formats that the images should follow
- An estimation as to the likely file sizes
- The file naming (indexing) that the images should comply with
THE ARCHIVE TO BE DIGITISED
This unique collection is large with more than 3,800 postcards stored within
nine oversized volumes.
The postcards varied in size. The majority being of ‘normal’ postcard size but
some being smaller and some much larger – up to twice the normal size. Some
postcards were in booklet format, while others were glossy, had a matt finish or
were even made from textile.
The condition of the postcards also varied. The majority being in very good
condition, especially considering their age and the fact that they had been
through the postal system! However, some were in relatively poor condition
with fading ink and some with tatty edges and corners.
Beside each postcard was a hand-written description of the postcard – a
description of what was depicted on the front of the card and also a transcription
of the writing on the reverse of the postcard.
ONSITE DIGITISATION & INDEXING
As TownsWeb Archiving offer an on site digitisation service and due to the
precious nature of this collection it was felt by the Museum that it would be
better to do the digitisation on site at their premises. All of the images were
captured in full colour RAW Format so that processing work could be carried
out off site.
IMAGE PROCESSING
The digitised images were cropped and processed to full colour tiff. Due to the
fact that full album pages were digitised in full colour to uncompressed full
reproduction quality tiff formats then the file sizes were very large. Therefore a
set of reduced quality compressed jpeg files was also supplied.
INDEXING THE IMAGES & OUTPUT MEDIA
The defined indexing strategy was to provide each image within a folder. The
image name would match the page number within the album and the folder
name would match the album name.
Whilst this indexing strategy was relatively straight forward, it had to be done
with meticulous accuracy to ensure that the digitised postcards could easily be
found.
There were nine postcard albums and the sensible approach was to provide each
album of images on it’s own DVD. The set therefore consisted of 9 DVDs
which were individually and appropriately labeled. Further sets of DVD’s were
also produced.
Museum Curator said…
“This postcard collection of the First World War period is second to none and is
of National interest. As the owner has indicated he will eventually pass it to a
National museum we were keen to have a digital record of the collection.
It was therefore opportune that we became aware of Townsweb Archiving as we
had planned a project to scan the postcard collection. After initial contact
Townsweb outlined their services and offered a free quotation. This was
followed by a series of emails to discuss our requirements and assess the amount
of work to be done. The quotation we subsequently received was acceptable and
we were satisfied that Townsweb could provide the service we needed to
complete the project. Townsweb agreed to come to our premises to scan the
postcard collection. Within a month of the on-site scanning the work was
complete and a DVD containing the digitised record of the first postcard album
was sent to us to check to make sure we were satisfied before the full task was
completed.
We were pleased with the overall result. The work had been done meticulously,
each album page being scanned in tiffs files. The quality of the scans is very
good with the tiffs excellent for reproduction purposes.
We believe that Townsweb Archiving were good value for money. They produced
exactly what was required in a professional way and were sensitive and flexible
to our needs. The project has provided the Museum and the collection owner
with a permanent digital record of the postcard collection which will benefit
historians, soldiers and the general public for many years to come.”
TownsWeb Archiving Ltd can be contacted on
01536 713834 or on the web at
www.townswebarchiving.com or via email at
enquiries@townswebarchiving.com.
