Expert digitisation consultants
Inhouse collection & delivery service
Accredited digitisation studio team
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Capture data from any material type
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Newspapers
TownsWeb Archiving’s digitisation technicians have a wealth of experience in newspaper scanning and in helping libraries and societies preserve and protect their valuable historical records.
Digitisation not only protects material from loss or damage but when digitised to PDF, TownsWeb can also perform Optical Character Recognition (OCR) processing, making the articles within those publications fully searchable. OCR allows genealogical researchers to search newspapers (by word or phrase) making your material more widely accessible.
Historically newspapers were digitised to microfilm or microfiche format, which is not easy to access. TownsWeb can work with both the original newspapers, film copies or a mixture of both.
Find out how much your project could cost
Visit our digitisation studio – See how our Book Scanning service works
Hear what our clients have to say about our digitisation services
TownsWeb Archiving have proved very able and extremely helpful in supporting us to bring a local heritage alive for local people. We would certainly recommend TownsWeb Archiving to other libraries, museums and archives.
Exhibition and Display Officer
We are delighted with the results. Without TownsWeb Archiving’s services we could not have completed the work in time and on budget. Their staff have been nothing but approachable, helpful and attentive and I can strongly recommend their services.
Head of Digital
TownsWeb offered us a complete end-to-end service, from scanning and transcription, to web design and content management software. Their work was completed quickly and to a high standard, and we are extremely pleased with the results.
Information & Archives Officer
Digitisation Frequently Asked Questions
We use bespoke, high-resolution planetary scanners and a range of high-resolution cameras, offering non-contact capture of your delicate newspaper collections. Our equipment can capture single page or double-page spreads creating output formats in TIFF, JPEG (JPEG2000), PDF (PDFA) or any other industry-standard image format you may require. We can also create further surrogate files, such as OCR’d multi-page PDFs, MS Word and eBooks.
All files are captured by our highly trained digitisation technicians using overhead, daylight balanced, non-heat producing lighting, before undergoing a formal quality assurance checking procedure. The final step in the process is the delivery of your electronic files by hard drive.
As standard, TWA survey all material prior to any digitisation project being carried out to ensure that it can withstand the scanning process. If there is evidence of fragility, brittleness, torn pages, and/or mould, or any other signs of damage, then recommendations are made for how to repair and stabilise the content appropriately.
There are many things that need to be taken into consideration when costing your digitisation project, such as:
- Fragility
- Pre-existing damage
- Scale of the collection
Consequently, it’s impossible to give a definitive answer as to cost, but you can get a rough estimate using our digitisation quote calculator below.
Newspapers are a delicate material to begin with and unsuitable storage conditions, handling, and time only serves to make them more fragile, so care must be taken not to turn the pages too quickly. The pages must also be digitised on a flat surface and without heat producing lighting. If the content of the pages are not captured clearly then this will impact any plans you might have to carry out Optical Character Recognition (OCR) later down the line. Every single page needs to be turned by hand and newspaper collections often consist of many tens, hundreds, or sometimes even thousands, of individual issues, which means it is often a slow and lengthy material to process.
Calculate the cost of digitising your bound volume collections
Simply input your specifications into the FREE digitisation quote calculator below, to get an estimate of how much your project might cost. The prices quoted are indicative for your material quantity and type but are subject to any additional costs such as file naming, folder naming and any post-processing requirements you may have.
If you don’t see your specific material listed it might be that your content is more suited to an informal chat.
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Enter your project details, material type and email using the form provided
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Speak with our consultants
Book a discovery call if you have any questions or wish to proceed with your project
Bound Volume Digitisation Quote Calculator
Important Note: We charge a standard £500 project set-up and management fee in addition to the cost of digitisation.
Capture the data within your Newspapers
Digitisation places your newspapers in the perfect format to capture the valuable data contained within them, offering great potential for system integration and online access and discovery.
Capture the data within your collection with optical character recognition, identifying typed text within images and converting this to searchable metadata through a process of scanning, using the latest specialist software. We can also carry out any preprocessing measures necessary to get the very best results, outputting to any format you may require.
Learn more about Optical Character Recognition
Publish your Newspapers online
PastView is the perfect platform for publishing your newspapers online, offering great potential for access and discovery. Manage and publish your collection with:
- Page Turning: Offering a smooth and elegant ‘real feel’ experience
- Volume and Page Metadata: Assigning attributes to create an efficient collection structure
- High Resolution Zoom: Revealing every minute detail through large scale manipulation
- Keyword Search & Advanced Filters: Creating numerous deep dive opportunities into your collections