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Digitisation & metadata

Archival quality.
Everyday access.

Practical support for digitisation projects and metadata improvements, helping your community find and use your collections.

Digitisation projects Metadata services
Illustrative scene of collaborative collection work
LIBRARY LINKS / DIGITISATION & METADATA

What We Deliver

  • A practical digitisation plan and Statement of Requirements
  • Clear guidance on file types, resolution, and preservation standards
  • Metadata structures ready for your systems
  • Files and records prepared for bulk ingest
  • Reduced staff time and lower project costs compared with fully in-house approaches

Digitisation & metadata

How much staff time
could digitisation take?

See what scanning, file naming, uploading and cataloguing could cost your team in-house.

Digitisation Projects

Digitisation is more than scanning. It’s about making your collections accessible, discoverable, and sustainable for the long term, without draining your staff or budget.

Most libraries find these projects complex. They involve specialist equipment, technical standards, metadata decisions, and ongoing staff time. In-house digitisation often ends up costing more once you factor in equipment (frequently tens of thousands of dollars), training, and the hours your team spends on the process.

Discuss your digitisation project ↗

Metadata discovery

A practical starting point
for your metadata.

Metadata Services

Clear, consistent metadata helps people find, understand and use your collections. We can help create descriptions, clean existing records and prepare information for your systems.

Start with our metadata discovery questionnaire. It captures your collection size, current records, systems and priorities so we can discuss a scope that fits your organisation.

Request a metadata discovery questionnaire
From collection to access

How we help with digitisation

  • Plan and scope: Define the collection, priorities and practical scope of your digitisation project.
  • Document requirements: Prepare a clear Statement of Requirements tailored to your collection.
  • Set technical standards: Advise on capture settings, file formats and preservation needs.
  • Map metadata: Structure descriptive and technical metadata so items are discoverable in your systems.
  • Prepare for bulk ingest: Prepare files and records for upload into your library management system.
  • Work with your team: Shape the approach around your collection knowledge, resources and everyday workflows.

We take on the heavy lifting so your team can focus on service, not project management.

Benefits for your team and community

Access to collections

Make collections easier for your community to discover and use.

Save staff time

Give your team more time for service and other priorities.

Save space on storage

Reduce routine handling and improve storage planning while retaining originals as required.

Metadata support

How we help with metadata

Choose the support your collection needs, as a standalone project or alongside digitisation.

  • Create catalogue records: Describe uncatalogued physical, digitised and born-digital material.
  • Clean and standardise: Improve names, dates, subjects and identifiers, and review gaps or duplicate records.
  • Review and map fields: Map information between systems while preserving collection context.
  • Prepare for migration: Structure and check records against the target system’s import requirements.

The agreed scope may include new or cleaned records, field mappings, import files and guidance for your team.

Discuss your metadata needs ↗
Understanding metadata and file types

Metadata describes the collection and its files

  • Descriptive metadata: Titles, dates, creators, subjects and contextual information that help people find and understand an item.
  • Technical metadata: File format, resolution, dimensions and other properties used to manage digital files.

Digitised files serve different purposes

  • Access files: Everyday formats such as JPEGs and PDFs, prepared for viewing and sharing.
  • Archival files: Preservation formats such as TIFFs and PDF/A, selected alongside appropriate capture standards, quality checks and preservation processes.