Digitisation

The London Archives has over twenty years of digitisation experience and can create digital copies in a wide variety of formats. We offer commercial digitisation services to organisations and individuals.

Digitisation at The London Archives

We typically digitise the collections we preserve and share at The London Archives for the following reasons.

• Preservation – to reduce handling and wear of fragile or regularly used items
• Surrogacy – to provide a convenient copies of items which cannot be easily viewed
• Access – to open up collections to an international audience through digital publishing
• Income – to generate income through commercial use which supports preservation and development of the collections, and our services

We also work with other archives, heritage organisations, businesses, charities and individuals to digitise and develop their collections. We understand that the digitisation requirements can vary from one customer to the next and we can offer a bespoke service to meet your needs.

Our digitisation services include

• Digitisation surveys and estimates
• Expert handling and care for archival material
• Document scanning
• Secure storage of materials
• Document conservation services where necessary
• File metadata creation

Our studios

Our on site studios in central London are set up to capture a wide variety of document formats. Our workstations include specialist equipment for scanning books, including those which need extra care and attention during digitisation, cameras set up for flat work including photographs and prints and a studio set up for large format items including maps and plans.

Our team is trained to work with archives and fragile material that needs specific care during the process of digitisation, working closely with our Collections Care team to ensure that your collection is given the best possible care.

Find out more

If you have a collection that you’d like to digitise, please get in touch and provide an initial outline of your requirements, including the format, size and number of items you'd like to have copied.