The Digitisation Insider: August’s Digitisation Highlights

What we worked on in August 2026

In August, we worked on multiple projects, including new projects, such as The Photographer’s Gallery and Sarratt Local History Society. We have also been continuing with ongoing projects including the Museum of Scottish Railways, The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo and Historic Houses Foundation.

We have had some interesting material this month particularly from the Museum of Scottish Railways. This material ranges from letters to photo frames and negatives. We have also scanned a scrapbook from the Sarratt Local History Society which includes news and photos from a village.

Project Spotlight

I’m excited to talk about a new project that we scanned in August; Sarratt Local History Society. We received two large scrapbooks from Sarratt Local History Society, and these scrapbooks contain information about the village Sarratt, including village updates, local news taken from newspaper articles, and images supporting the information which make the pages look more appealing.

These books were scanned using our large guardian scanner. We were able to scan each page individually by unscrewing the screws from the book. The pages were then easy to remove from the book so we decided this is the best way to scan the books. We also decided to scan these pages above the glass using a board and cloth, and used a weight at the top of the board to make sure the cloth stayed in place.

In this video you can see how carefully we handled removing and scanning the pages.

Favourite items scanned

My favourite item that I digitised in August was this little photo book from our batch with the Museum of Scottish Railways. I had the pleasure of handling and scanning this delicate book from the Second World War. This book contains a felt type of material with the photo on the next page. There is so much detail on the book including the imprinted pattern inside the book.

In this video you can see how gently we handle and scan this type of delicate material. I start by unravelling the string from the book and then carefully opening and scanning the book.

As well as the photo book, I scanned some beautiful framed photos that were in this same box for the Museum of Scottish Railways. These portraits also date back to the Second World War. Both the photo book and these frames were scanned on top of the vanguard glass with a cloth covered board underneath the material. These items couldn’t be scanned underneath the glass as this would damage the material.

I would also like to share this poster that I digitised and stitched for The Photographer’s Gallery. This looks like an advertisement poster for the gallery. I scanned this poster underneath the vanguard glass and carefully moved the poster to scan every area of the document. After I scanned all areas, I moved them all into photoshop to stitch the scans together creating the final image. Before outputting the image, I cropped a small black border around the image removing any unwanted space and blank areas. 

The Photographer’s Gallery photo credits: William Klein.

Lastly, we've continued our work with The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. Here are some of our favourite photo prints that we scanned in August. These are photos of an Australian dance show at Edinburgh castle. Our favourite scan is the photo including the kangaroo mascot!

Guess the year challenge

Did you play along from last month, and try to guess the year of the written letter (below) that we scanned from The Museum of Scottish Railways?

If so, we can reveal the answer is: 1946!

New and upcoming projects

In September we will be coming to the end of scanning our current batches of The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo and Unilever. We will also be starting several new projects including North Northants Council, The Honourable Society of the Middle Temple and a new batch from the Photographer’s Gallery!

New services and improvements

During August we installed new lights for our large guardian scanner. These lights are much newer and high quality compared to the previous lights. This will improve the quality of our scans. We have also made various improvements to the CaptureOne process that we use for scanning including adjusting our colour correction.

If you have materials that need digitising, then please reach out to our team for a friendly chat.