Scott Polar Research InstituteSPRI Review 2008
Freeze Frame: historic polar images
With funding from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), major progress was made on the Institute's project to digitise its historically important but little known photographic negative collection. The Freeze Frame project will result in a new web-based resource for further and higher education, although feedback in 2008 suggests that it will be of much wider interest. The project has the added benefit of enabling us to conserve some of the most fragile holdings in our collection. Digitisation of the historic photographic negative collection continued throughout 2008, under the supervision of Naomi Boneham.
Tim Banting replaced Jennifer Newbury as Digital Imaging Assistant, working through the 20,000 images selected for scanning. He was assisted by Sally Verrall and later by Jon Bird in the work of post-processing, which provides us with two images, one recording the original condition of the negative and one a clean, cropped and generally more presentable image for web delivery. Mel Rouse joined the project as Education Officer and has been working on creating resource packages built around the images. Willow Silvani took over the job of cataloguing each image from Frank Bowles, who moved to a permanent position in the University Library. Web site design began in 2008 and we began to develop strategies for the launch in 2009.
Heather Lane and Julian Dowdeswell