#digitisation

Explore the Ryukyu Kuniezu—three massive 17th-century maps of the Ryukyu Kingdom—now online in high resolution, with zoomable details of Okinawa and the island chains, plus the Wako Zukan pirate scroll.

And then they perished.

The digitisation of the University's unique and endangered videotapes

We are delighted to announce the start of a project to digitise one of our most diverse and intriguing collections.

A few years ago, Archives and Special Collections acquired a large collection of videotapes produced by the University of Strathclyde’s Audio-Visual Department. The Department, which was established in the 1970s, filmed all aspects of University life, originally using film but, in the 1980s, switching to video. Its output of c. 1330 videotapes is a rich resource, documenting every aspect of University life from the 1980s to around 2015. The student experience, graduations, the changing appearance of the campus, and teaching, learning and research are all very well documented. As you would expect, the collection is particularly strong in science, engineering and technology-related topics. Education is also well represented. The Department also covered events outside the University, in Glasgow and further afield. A few examples of titles serve to illustrate the wide-ranging nature of the subject matter:

Behind the scenes filming a soap opera (Brookside), 1985

International Festival of Sport, 1990

‘Bullyproofing Castlemilk Schools’, 1993

‘The Price of Adventure - Mountain Safety & Rescue’, 1996

Strathclyde University Dance Society, 2010

Living in student halls of residence, 2011

It is no exaggeration to say that the collection is a treasure trove waiting to be explored. At present, though, it is frustratingly inaccessible. All videotape formats are now obsolete and the tapes have to be digitised first, before we can play them, in order to ensure their long-term preservation. Indeed, the first and most fundamental aim of this project is to ensure the survival of the collection. Without intervention now, there is a high risk that we could lose it. This is due to the fact that all manufacturing of the machines to play the tapes has now stopped and there is a limited supply of second-hand machines. In addition, the technicians with the skills to repair and keep this dwindling supply of machines going are now fast approaching retirement age. It is therefore a race against time to get the recordings off the tapes.

At St. Catherine's Monastery at the foot of Egypt's Mount Sinai, the silence in the library is broken only by low electrical humming, as an early manuscript is bathed in green light.

A team from Greece are photographing thousands of fragile manuscripts, including some of the earliest copies of the Christian gospels, using a complex process that includes taking images in red, green and blue light and merging them with computer software to create a single high-quality color picture.

There is a tangible sense of urgency to the mission.

Although the monastery has survived centuries of warfare, it lies in a region where Islamist militants have destroyed countless cultural artifacts and documents in Syria and Iraq. Egypt's Christian churches have also been targeted by an Islamist insurgency in the rugged and thinly populated northern Sinai.