We offer digitisation for curation andpreservation services for a wide variety of audio-visual, photographic and paper documents to enable and support long-term preservation of, and access to, digital collections. We digitise objects according to international archival preservation and access standards. We also transcode, edit, and curate born-digital objects.
Digitisation is the first step in transferring physical objects into a digital format. At UCT, we adhere to international best practice guidelines developed by the following institutions:
UCT Libraries’ digitisation services adhere to the following basic digitisation standards for audio and visual media to ensure optimal reproduction and long-term preservation of legacy collections:
Flatbed scans: 600/300 dpi, 45cm long side, .tiff
Photographic film: 600/300 dpi, 45cm long side, .tiff
Audio: 24bit / 96kHz, .aif/.wav
Video: .mov, uncompressed, 720x486px, 29.97 fps
All archival files are digitally preserved along with their (edited) high resolution derivatives. Lower quality web derivatives are made available for research and educational use. In line with the digitisation process, we can help you with curating and preserving this data.
What we can Digitise
Documents and Images
Manuscripts (up to A3+)
Photographic prints (up to A3+)
Maps (up to A0)
Transparencies (colour and B&W negatives and slides):