The Digitisation Insider: June’s Digitisation Highlights

What we worked on in June 2026

Last month, we worked on a mixture of ongoing and new projects, including The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, Unilever, The Fusilier Museum, and Boots. I’m excited to share some of the interesting material that we have scanned.

We began working with The Fusilier Museum, digitising a collection of historical material, with much of it dating from the Second World War. I have also been working on the Boots project, which includes some fascinating magazines and other bound volumes. Alongside these new projects, we have continued our work with Unilever and The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

Project Spotlight

We started work with Boots this month and received several bound volumes, including company magazines and newsletters. I recently digitised these magazines, which are editions of Beacon, Boots’ in-house magazine from the 1960s. Filled with company news, shareholder reports, photographs, illustrations, and features on Boots’ products and services, these publications capture how the company communicated with its workforce and investors during a transformative period in its history.

These magazines were thin enough to be scanned on the board instead of using the book cradle. This worked well, as there were no shadows in the spine of the magazine, which can sometimes occur when scanning thicker books in the book cradle. The board also flattens the material more effectively, making it ideal for thin magazines.

The book cradle, however, works much better for thicker material, as it adjusts depending on the weight of each side of the book. This helps reduce distortion that can occur if thicker volumes are scanned on the board.

This video shows me scanning the magazines on our Vanguard scanner, followed by the final scans after they have been cropped in Capture One.

Interesting items scanned

In June, we continued our work with The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, and we have come across so many interesting items throughout the project. My favourite find has been these beautiful photo prints, which our digitisation technician, Mark, has been scanning. These prints showcase a variety of the performances featured at The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo.

As you can see in the video below, Mark is scanning the photo prints using a sheet of glass to gently flatten them. This is a quicker and more efficient way to scan this type of material, as prints like these can easily develop curved edges. My personal favourite image is the motorcyclist riding through the fire display at Edinburgh Castle. I think it is a particularly impressive performance!

We have also been scanning their collection of negatives, which capture the amazing performances. The image in this video appears to show a military band performing at Edinburgh Castle.

This video shows Zane scanning the negatives using a light box. He is using glass to flatten the negatives, which is particularly important in this situation as negatives can easily distort due to the light from the light box.

Zane then crops the scans in Capture One, leaving a small border to create the final image.

New and upcoming projects

In July, you can expect new and exciting content from The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo. We are also starting several new projects, including Nick Hutt - Honeymoon History. This is a small project that I will be working on, and it is a book showcasing their honeymoon.

We will also be working with the Museum of Scottish Railways, Historic Houses Foundation, and a new batch from Unilever.

New services and improvements

We now have a new Guardian large format scanner. We have been excited to use this new scanner as it is much more modern than our original Guardian. We have also been receiving more large format material recently, so a new large scanner will improve our workflow.

This scanner is smaller than our original Guardian but larger than our Vanguard scanners, making it perfect for books like the one shown in the video that do not require the extremely large Guardian.

Keep a look out on Instagram for a closer look at this new Guardian, as shown below!

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