Journals & Magazines

We use bespoke, high-resolution flatbed scanners and a range of high-resolution cameras, offering non-contact capture of your precious journals and magazines. Our equipment can capture single page or double-page spreads creating output formats in TIFF, JPEG (JPEG2000), PDF (PDFA) or any other industry-standard image format you may require. We can also create further surrogate files, such as OCR’d multi-page PDFs, MS Word and eBooks.

All files are captured by our highly trained digitisation technicians using overhead, daylight balanced, non-heat producing lighting, before undergoing a formal quality assurance checking procedure. The final step in the process is the delivery of your electronic files by hard drive.

As standard, TWA survey all material prior to any digitisation project being carried out to ensure that it can withstand the scanning process. If there is evidence of fragility, brittleness, pages being stuck together, rips, tears and/or mould, or any other signs of damage, then recommendations are made for how to appropriately repair and stabilise the material.

There are many things that need to be taken into consideration when costing your digitisation project, such as the condition of the material, whether it needs to be removed from and replaced into sleeves or envelopes, which can slow the process down. Even the resolution at which it is captured and any post processing that needs to be done can slow the process. Consequently, it’s impossible to give a definitive answer as to cost, but you can get a rough estimate with our digitisation calculator.

Magazines and journals are often printed on glossy or lustreless paper and, over time, this can become very thin and brittle, so care must be taken not to turn the pages too. Pages should also be digitised flat and without glare, and a glass screen and appropriate lighting can support capture. If the content of the pages are not captured clearly then this will impact any plans you might have to carry out Optical Character Recognition (OCR) later down the line. Magazine and journal collections often consist of many tens, hundreds, or sometimes even thousands of individual issues, which means it is often a slow and lengthy material to process.