Photographs are a common material found within most archive collections. Historically one of the quickest and easiest ways to capture important moments and events, they are often contained as either loose items, within envelopes, or housed in albums.
Whatever form they take, photographs are particularly vulnerable given the desire people have to flick through them again and again. Regular handling can cause them to fade, to be bent at the corners, to peel and tear, or to become tacky and stuck together, resulting in damage to the image itself. Thankfully, digitisation resolves all of these issues, and more, not only protecting your photographs but also making them more accessible.
The PastView platform was created with the sole intention of promoting access and discovery to heritage archives. PastView promises to offer a no-nonsense solution to the management and publishing of digitised and born-digital collections, and it is the platform of choice for many heritage organisations.
PastView offers a wide range of clever and engaging features that audiences love. Ideal for your photograph collections, we would recommend the following:
Do you want your digitised photographs to be entirely accessible, to reveal all the ultra-fine detail they contain? If so, PageExplorer is for you. The intelligent interface offers a high-resolution zoom function that perfectly reveals every intricacy, meaning absolutely no stone is left unturned. Using the cursor and scroll wheel of a mouse, or pinch-and-zoom actions on smartphones and tablets, the user’s experience is instantly elevated, leaving them keen to return to your digitised photographs time and again.
An efficient solution for archivists and collection holders who do not want to lose the rich information contained within their archive, such as notes and details written directly onto images (which has, historically, been a common practice). This important data can be captured through handwritten transcription and converted into searchable (machine-readable) textual metadata. Transcription can be outputted to many different formats such as Excel, providing a wide range of control for your data.
Photograph collections are often so vast that searching for an individual item can be incredibly time-consuming. Tagging your photographs enables you to link items together so all other relevant photographs are pulled from the archive at the same time, acting like a deep search into the furthest corners of your archive. Your tag could be a specific composer, artist or other influential person, and by tagging items that contain those same details, each will be drawn to the forefront to enjoy the limelight, making the journey to online discovery as simple as a single search term.
The compare/contrast feature within PastView enables you to select photographs from your collection to display side by side. This is a great way to see changes in colour, season, pre or post-historical events, and even the difference between one significant period in history and another. By placing the images alongside each other any changes between them becomes more evident, which can be incredibly powerful. A dividing line between the photographs allows visitors to slide from side to side between the two images, leaving them to marvel at the similarities as well as the differences.
Archives are a thing of wonder so it’s not surprising that many will contain items that visitors would love to own for themselves. With physical print requests, you can make this possible by simply allowing them to request a printed copy in either size A5, A4 or A3. If you are unable to offer this service in-house then TownsWeb Archiving can fulfill this service on your behalf, dispatching orders directly to the purchaser. This feature enables you to generate some all important revenue from your photograph collections; a financially prudent move for your archive.
Find out how Herefordshire Libraries are sharing their stunning photograph collections through PastView. High-resolution zoom enables the most discreet of details to be revealed, enhancing the discovery of your digitised photographs!
Prepare to be taken on a journey of discovery: herefordshirehistory.org.uk
Here's what Herefordshire Libraries had to say about PastView:
pastview.townswebarchiving.com/our-work/herefordshire-history
If you would like to see how PastView can work for your own digitised photograph collections then sign up to the PastView Playground and try it out for size. Just upload a few items from your archive, select the options and features, and see how PastView could look for you: