We offer digitisation for curation and preservation services for a wide variety of audio-visual, photographic and paper documents to enable and support long-term preservation of, and access to, digital collections. We digitise objects according to international archival preservation and access standards. We also transcode, edit, and curate born-digital objects. 

Request for Digitisation

Our services are currently under review and we are not accepting any external digitisation requests at this time. Please contact us at dls@uct.ac.za for any inquiries or assistance. Library staff can make a request through the Internal Digitisation Request Form. 

Our Digitisation Services

Digitisation is the first step in transferring physical objects into a digital format.  At UCT, we adhere to international best practice guidelines developed by the following institutions:

• International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives (IASA)  
• International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) 
• Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) 

UCT Libraries’ digitisation services adhere to the following basic digitisation standards for audio and visual media to ensure optimal reproduction and long-term preservation of legacy collections:

• Flatbed scans: 600/300 dpi, 45cm long side, .tiff
• Photographic film: 600/300 dpi, 45cm long side, .tiff
• Audio: 24bit / 96kHz, .aif/.wav
• Video: .mov, uncompressed, 720x486px, 29.97 fps

All archival files are digitally preserved along with their (edited) high resolution derivatives. Lower quality web derivatives are made available for research and educational use.  In line with the digitisation process, we can help you with curating and preserving this data. 

What we can Digitise

Equipment