HarrisBPO provides its scanning and digitisation service for libraries
November 2007 by Marc Jacob
HarrisBPO now offers a scanning and digitisation
service especially for libraries, archives and local studies
collections. Outsourcing scanning and digitisation work is becoming
increasingly popular as a way for libraries to preserve and share
archive material and to make it more accessible to a wider audience via
the web. While printed media poses libraries the problems of storage,
retrieval, handling damage and access, digital media makes documents
accessible, searchable and storable; for all of these reasons many
librarians are embarking on extensive scanning and digitisation projects
for their archives and collections.
HarrisBPO is an experienced provider of outsourced scanning and
digitisation for all types of library media from paper documents,
magazines and books, to microfilm, microfiche, transparencies and
negatives. The ability to scan and digitise handwritten documents,
photographs and drawings, oversize documents, maps, foreign languages and character sets is also important to preserving library archive material and allows HarrisBPO to digitise entire collections rather than only part of a project. This is particularly important for local studies
digitisation projects which often consist of a range of different media
to be scanned, and put into electronic format for the web.
The library collections that HarrisBPO has digitised are as unique and
varied as the libraries themselves. HarrisBPO has digitised portraits
and pictures, even A0 sized scans. Other projects include scanning exam
papers with foreign character sets, digitising paperwork to free up
storage space, digitising journals and magazines for the web and
scanning local studies collections for the web.