IDP Services
Specialist Digitisation, Web and Image Management Services for the Heritage Sector
Are you a museum, library or HE institution wishing to embark on a digitisation project but do not know where to start? Are you worried about who you can trust to offer you genuinely informed advice on your unique and fragile manuscripts or artefacts? Are you applying for a grant for digitisation but do not know what equipment you will need for the results you require? Do you need an image management system but have no in-house experience and a limited budget? Do you want to work with an organisation which will offer your staff specialist training so they can continue to develop the project? Are you simply looking for advice from someone in the field? IDP can help.
WHO WE ARE
IDP is an international project based at the British Library to make Silk Road manuscripts, artefacts, textiles and photographs available to all through conservation, digitisation, cataloguing, education and research. Our database of over 90,000 objects with over 130,000 high-quality images is available through our multi-lingual websites. It is the largest and most successful digitisation project of its kind.
WHY USE IDP?
With over a decade spent managing large and small digitisation, web and image management projects in the heritage sector, IDP has unrivalled expertise and experience. Our team of ten practising professionals frequently give advice to individuals and institutions worldwide and have worked as consultants, digitisers, image management and website designers on several external projects. We have trained staff in the UK and worldwide, worked on-site and off-site and consistently produced excellent quality images to schedule and within budget. You will not find a service with more experience or specialised expertise in the heritage sector.
WHAT WE OFFER
- Consultancy
- IDP offers consultancy on all aspects and at all stages of a digitisation project, from the initial consultation to full consultancy at every stage of your project. Our expertise includes: conservation assessments, project management, managing data, meeting international standards, advice of the level of digitisation required, the equipment most appropriate to your material, image naming conventions, and much more.
- Digitisation
- IDP offers top-end digitisation of all kinds of heritage objects including archives, manuscripts, archaeological artefacts, textiles, historical photographs (including glass negatives and lantern slides). We can send a photographer to digitise on-site with our portable studio or do the work at our specialist digitisation studio at the British Library. All our staff have daily experience in handling fragile heritage materials.
Please note: we only offer digitisation for heritage materials and no work is carried out without a full conservation assessment. - Post-Digitisation Services
- IDP staff can prepare images for print, publicity, the web, and for archives. We can carry out this work on newly digitised images or existing images.
- Database/Image Management System Design and Implementation
- Getting the right image/data management system to suit your present and future needs is essential to the long-term sustainability and success of any project. Bringing in consultants who might be IT experts but have little understanding of the nature of your material or your users’ needs often leads to expensive and inappropriate choices which prove difficult to maintain and develop. IDP can advise you on systems, or work with you to design your own system, to fit your needs and budget using standard easily-supported software.
- Web Page Design and Implementation
- IDP understands the needs of scholars, museum and library users, and the educational sector. It has designed databases for all these users. It also understands the cost of maintaining a web site and will work closely with your staff to ensure the best solution for your organisation which will be both economic and sustainable.
- Follow-up Support
- IDP can offer various packages of follow-up support visits to resolve problems, implement enhancements and advise on further development.
- Training
- IDP can offer training to your staff in all the above areas to enable you to maintain your project into the future without additional consultancy costs. It will encourage you to involve your staff in all stages of our work.
Notes:
- IDP is in contact with other specialist digitisation services and will direct you to them if they are more appropriate to your needs.
- IDP does not offer low or medium-end digitisation. We only work with institutions with heritage material. We do not offer data input, OCR or bound volume scanning.
Selected Projects
- Lao Manuscripts Project – design and implementation of image management system and web site.
- Mongolian Manuscripts, for Cambridge University under an AHRC grant
- Infra-red photography of the Senior Kharosthi Manuscripts, for the Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project, University of Washington
- Historical Photographs from SOAS for the Internet Mission Photograph Archive (IMPA)
- Historical Photographs of the Hunza Valley for the Ismaili Centre and SOAS
- Shakespeare’s First Folio for a facsimile publication for the Globe Theatre
- Shakespeare’s Quarto – assisting Octavo
- Jain Manuscripts for the Jain Manuscripts Catalogue Project.
- Infra-red shots of Ramayana for scholars