University Digitisation Centre

The University Digitisation Centre offers advice, training and services about converting analogue materials like books, research papers and 3D objects to digital formats for editing, data minding, resource sharing and preservation.

Visit the centre

The University Digitisation Centre digitises items from the University’s collections to support research. We also offer consultation, advice and self-service options for students and staff.

Our services include:

• Scanning books, maps, posters, loose documents and papers, transparencies, and negatives to industry standards
• Extracting text from scanned images to create editable documents or to facilitate text mining (this may include licencing fees for processing)
• High-quality, self-service scanning at no cost (for university teaching and research business)
• Digitisation advice, including technical requirements, specifications and feasibility for grant applications.

Recently we have been working with Professor Andrew May on the digitisation of the Sand and McDougall directories (historical land use directories for Melbourne) to create an address-level database and a map of records. We have also been extracting data from paper-based surveys to support the Sleep and Education: Learning New Skills Early study in the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences.

Resources

• ABBYY Recognition server
• Books scanners (A3-A1)
• Digitisation project planning
• Flatbed scanner (A3 with transparency adapter)
• High resoltuion digital cameras
• Photogrammetry expertise
• Photographic slide/negative digitisation equipment
• Photographic studio
• Scientific photographer

User information

The platform is available free-of-charge to all members of the University of Melbourne community.

Image: Ben Kreunen